My wife, Patricia Robson, a socialist, supporter of the BBC, passionate Remainer and Guardian reader, who has died of cancer aged 83, was lucky enough to work at a time when the charismatic primary school teacher was given free rein.
A wordsmith, she would capture the arresting phrase and run with it in her storytelling and poetry. In the 1970s Pat gathered a group of teachers in Kent to engage primary school children in drama productions. They would outline a plot, then get the 20 to 30 children to perform various scenes while a narrator kept the story flowing. Calling themselves The Tree of Tales, the group visited schools after hours, staging dramas such as the Pilgrim Fathers, the Black Death and the Peasants’ Revolt.
Born in Raynes Park, south-west London, to Marion (nee Pasby) and William James, a transport manager, Pat went to Tolworth girls’ school and then Gloucester Teacher Training College, which is now part of the University of Gloucester (1961-64). Her first job was at Sherwood Park infant and junior schools, Tunbridge Wells, Kent (1964-77); she then worked as a peripatetic drama teacher for Kent for two years before joining Horsmonden primary (1979-82), Rusthall primary (1982-85), and then became deputy head at West Kingsdown primary (1985-88).
Pat was the national curriculum advisory teacher for Kent county council from 1988 to 1992, and then spent 10 years as its teaching course leader.
After retiring, she created a one-person show that she performed in schools. Children would enter the hall to find a “sleeping figure” beneath an embroidered bedspread, its pockets filled with meaningful objects. Once awakened, Pat invited the audience to select a pocket and listen to the story it held.
Pat’s main aesthetic interests were art and literature. Her writing room was a storehouse of books and sculptures made by her first husband, John Robson, whom she married in 1965, with her son Jake’s paintings adorning the walls. John died in 1987. We met through a mutual friend in 1990; we married on Pat’s birthday in 2019.
In her later years, she led poetry groups for people with dementia and their carers, and was also a central figure in the University of the Third Age poetry group in Mayfield, East Sussex, where we lived.
She published five volumes of poetry, with her final poem composed in the Hospice in the Weald despite being unable to write or use her right arm. “Pat couldn’t hold a pen, so I told her I’d do that,” said a hospice nurse. “The poem came out spontaneously with an occasional long pause, in one of which she said: ‘Just because my eyes are closed doesn’t mean I’m not busy thinking.’”
Pat is survived by me, Jake, and her granddaughters, Jamila and Xanthe.
