Irene Strange: Southsea icon Irene prepares to turn 90 and reflects on an eventful life spent around the world

This pioneering social warrior has won many awards and medals, and pride of place is the Portsmouth’s Pamodzi’s 2022 ‘Inspirational elder’ award and The Southsea Association Lifetime achievement award she received in 2012 for her work in and around the community of Southsea and Hampshire.

When I arrive to interview Irene Strange, 89, of Southsea a tea tray is ready with a third cup, in case I had brought a guest which was a custom I hadn’t observed before. Her home is full of memorabilia, and she was ready with documents for me to see. Her paintings of Stonehenge and still life adorn the walls. She is energetic, dynamic and vivacious in her bright red jumper as we settle down to chat.

Irene has achieved so much for a woman who didn’t understand the notion of ‘being someone’ and was told to be a shop assistant by her mother in her 20s, she says.

Irene redefines the terms wearing different hats and multi-tasking. She has lived abroad, raising a family in North Africa and working as a columnist and broadcaster in the 1960s. She is a published writer and poet, an exhibiting artist, a founder of a property trust helping the homeless, has founded a community garden, is a WRAF veteran and a member of the International Red Hats to list a few.

Irene’s poem Queen Bee is being performed as part of the programme at the Spring Theatre, Havant in April and she is also organising an art exhibition in August for the Portsmouth and Hampshire Art Society.

Queen Bee was inspired by watching the bees in the Southsea Green Community Garden she helped set up in 2013 by ensuring plots of land were given to residents to grow food. She also founded friends of the Butterfly House at The Cumberland House Natural History Museum.

NOW READ: Irene’s short story Southsea Castle

Born in 1933 and growing up in Thatcham during the war, Irene was determined to have a different life than the one her mother wanted for her. The second of five children, she was reading about the horrors of the concentration camps at the age of 10 while her mother disapproved and thought it inappropriate. At 15, she worked in the village post office and by 17 she knew she wanted to be a writer and that village life was not for her.

At 17, she ran away to join the Royal Air Force. She caught a bus to Reading, 15 miles up the road and joined the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) and worked as a teleprinter operator which set her up for a writing career.

Irene said: ‘I married my school desk sweetheart, Albert. I was 20 years old and had a proper wedding at Thatcham church in a white dress and a party at the village hall. Albert served as a diver in bomb explosives with the navy in Portsmouth.’

Her expat time abroad with her late husband was full of adventures as she forged her own path while Albert worked offshore on oil rigs.

In Aden, Yemen in 1966 Albert was diving officer for Aden Port Trust bomb and mine disposal. She was a secretary at a bank which involved travelling back and forth in an armoured vehicle while being under attack she said: ‘Bullets were ricocheting off the walls and smashing windows.’

Straight-talking and unflappable in the face of danger Irene describes the daily journey of going to work merely as ‘hectic.’

She started her career in broadcasting at the Aden Forces Broadcasting Association. She says: ‘I was like a DJ every other night with this other girl from 6pm to 10pm. We did record and hospital requests.

‘We used to go round to the schools with a recorder and the children were allowed to ask for record requests for their friends and parents as long as we didn’t give an address because of the terrorists. We were out there during the bombings and fighting.’

There’s a pattern to Irene’s expat life. She says: ‘We went to Ethiopia because we were kicked out of Aden. That was before we were kicked out of Benghazi. ‘

When they left Aden, she says: ‘we didn’t have any money because the port stopped paying the wages, so we left the key in the car and only had enough money to get to Ethiopia not England. Then we had to hitch-hike to Assab [Ethiopia]’

Albert got a job building a jetty while she stayed in the lorry driver’s hotel which was ‘horrible’ so they could save enough money to fly home to England and then out to Benghazi, Libya for another job.

When they eventually returned to England, they settled in Southsea where she bought a guest house that quickly became running two guest houses for the homeless for the next 25 years.

Irene was also a publican and served as the St Jude’s Ward councillor for eight years.

She loves dressing up which works well for The International Society of Red Hats: Scarlett O’Hara’s Southsea which she joined in 2001. Her wardrobe boasts ‘10 red hats, six red fascinators and lots of purple ensemble.’

The group meets once a month and holds annual conventions.

On her 80th birthday Irene flew Stateside by herself to Amarillo, Texas to visit her sister who she hadn’t seen in decades and while there, met the Amarillo Red Hats.

You can see Irene in her red hat along Clarendon Road at The Strand, Southsea on the mural painted by Mark Lewis.

The 90th birthday celebrations will be a family dinner at a restaurant in Gunwharf, with a party for 50 at Waverley Road Bowls Club, in aid of Ukraine and earthquake appeals.

‘I’m an Aries: loyal, true, and honest,’ says Irene.