Chapter 45

Never, Gradually, Suddenly - Dad

For year after year, decade after decade, he was invincible.  Invincible, not in the sense of some ancient warrior, heavyweight boxer, or immovable politician or dictator.  Rather he was invincible as a parent, invincible as a father, as a son, brother, friend or colleague.  Rarely could he be deflected from the paths he chose to pursue and if he had been it was never for very long.  Never did he lose sight of what was ‘right’ and what was ‘wrong’.  Never did he fail to support family and friends.

Looking back over most of his life, it is now clear that nothing could stop him; put an obstacle in his path and he’d find a way around it.  Deprive him of funding and he’d scrimp, save and work harder.  Tell him it wasn’t for people like him and he’d challenge it.  Suggest she was too good for him and he’d ignore it.  Hit him with a massive blow and he’d pick himself up off the floor.  Without any fanfare, he had the fortitude to just deal with whatever was placed in front of him.

Through the eyes of a child during the sixties, there was never any doubt he was perfectly okay as a dad.  I understood, blindly accepting, the concept that dads went out to work to earn the money that paid for food, clothes, treats and holidays.  I’d heard of Rolls-Royce and was vaguely impressed that he was doing something connected with jet-engines, nuclear subs and Lady Penelope’s car.  It didn’t bother me that he’d sometimes sit down and read the paper when he got home whilst waiting for Mum put the tea on the table, or that it was usually she who walked us home from cubs, brownies or a friend’s house: it was just the way it was.  It was different when the weekend arrived; then he would be one hundred percent focused on the family as we were herded from shops, to relatives, to the City Ground, to the swimming pool, the park, or to the Peak District.  If there was ever a lull, he’d be servicing the car, mowing the grass, painting the window-sills, making book shelves, washing up, playing games.  Throughout our childhood, we took him for granted.  If we had a problem, he would solve it; something broke, he’d fix it; were going somewhere, he’d plan it; ask a ‘how to do something’ question, he’d know the answer; making Mum happy, he seemed to have found the necessary formulae.

Mum, of course, would threaten misbehaving children with the token, ‘Wait till your father gets home,’ but, whilst I remember her occasionally dishing out a few slaps across unprotected calves, I can’t recall any physical punishment from him.  His tactic was to impose economic sanctions and the pocket-money or treats would dry up for a week or two.  Hard to provoke, I never heard my parents argue with each other, certainly not in front of us, and the only time he could be heard shouting was down the City Ground.  Yet he was clearly no pushover, advancing steadily in his career and finding himself in demand for all sorts of responsible positions on committees and institutions.

During my early teens, whenever I actually bothered to think about it that is, I simply classified him as taxi-driver, income source, fellow sports enthusiast, and occasional-tutor if the maths homework was proving tricky.  It had been a worrying time when the life-threatening stroke had struck him down in 1970, leaving me cheesed-off about the ruined holiday, scared he might die and then, as the immediate crisis passed, bewildered by how incapacitated he was for several weeks.  I didn’t really even acknowledge the remarkable determination he showed that had him up on his feet, talking properly again, and back at work in just a few months.  For the rest of my life I’ve been able to spell ‘haemorrhage’ and known about the risk of high blood pressure.

And if that blow wasn’t enough, he was hit with a sledgehammer during the summer of 1975.  Mum’s diagnosis and the difficult months that followed must have been a tough load to bear; keeping her spirits up, managing her care, shielding his children, focusing on his job and so on.  I never once saw him waiver although there must have been moments when it felt overwhelming.  Who did he lean on?  Not his Dad or In-Laws, they didn’t do emotional stuff.  Not his siblings, they were on the other side of the world.  Not his children, we provided some of the motivation and part of the cure but weren’t able to offer much support.  Some friends yes, but the reality was he just had to largely deal with it on his own.

The ’engineer’ in him helped.  He rationalised and parked his feelings in safe place, and then began to plot a new path.  Nevertheless, it was a big call to head for Egypt, leaving a seventeen-year old daughter and fifteen-year old son to run the house and complete their school education.  Funnily enough, we didn’t see it that way and were pleased he was looking outwards rather than shrinking inwards and were excited about the prospect of holidays in the desert.

Cruising through my twenties, I continued to take things at face-value.  Dad seemed happy enough and certainly with Mavis now in charge of their social lives, he had no chance of becoming insular.  Between spells in Cairo, they found time to move the family home from suburban Bramcote to the Old School House in rural Staunton Harold and quickly cultivated yet another group of friends in the area.

When I did occasionally stop to consider things, I had a new perspective.  Having recently completed my own journey through the British education pipeline, I could now appreciate how different my experience had been.  My path had been clear, cushioned, funded and supported by a mixture of switched-on parents, some enthusiastic and competent teachers and an established state education mechanism.  In contrast, Dad, as a teenager, had picked his way through a maze of possible routes with very little guidance, occasionally heading off in a direction that could have taken him to a very different destination.  Sometimes he was already half-way along a particular route before he realised where it was heading and then made his own decision to change tack onto a different, more attractive path that he’d just discovered. To gain an Honours Degree in Mechanical Engineering, having left school for an apprenticeship at sixteen, and with no real back-up, either financially or emotionally from home, was quite an achievement.

By this time, having by then been involved in a few relationships myself, I could also raise my eyebrows and admire his nerve.  What was he thinking when, as a 17 year-old, he set his sights on the popular 21 year-old girl in the typing pool?  It must have taken some bottle and I don’t think I’d have been brave enough to run the risk of failure or the inevitable teasing but it clearly never gave him pause for thought.  Perhaps it was a genetic thing; he found himself facing a similar age-gap when Mavis reappeared thirty years later but I suspect he once again never saw this as an insurmountable obstacle and ploughed on regardless.

By the end of the eighties, the family dynamics had changed and a new era was opening up for Dad.  For the first time in his adult life, the responsibilities he’d been shouldering for years had lightened.  Dud, Mim, Harry and Ethel had all succumbed during the decade to the various ailments of old age, whilst at the same time all his children and step-children were finding their own way in the world, increasingly financially and emotionally independent.  With the finances healthy after his stint abroad and disillusioned about what was on offer at RR when he returned to the UK, he opted to take a redundancy package and try his hand as an independent business consultant.  Possibly a brave step?   Would he have been better cruising towards his pension in a quiet corner of the organisation?  Not for him.  He didn’t do ‘just ticking over’ very well and would quickly have become frustrated.

Apparently their joint savings and pension would be enough to fund the lifestyle they envisaged but they decided that they also needed to fund improvements on TOSH as well as create a financial safety cushion.  So now in his mid-fifties, out on his own after thirty years in the same organisation, he branded himself as DMS Business Consultant, grabbed a small start-up loan from the government and enrolled in a ‘How to run a small business course’.  I’m not sure I’d have had the energy and desire to kick-start a new career but, as usual, he adopted a methodical, dedicated approach and over the next five years through a mixture of successes, and some disappointments, he’d generated enough turnover and profit to be able, at the age of 59, to hang up his boots.  Typically, he’d claim that he obtained as much satisfaction from meeting a wide range of different people and helping them solve problems as he did from the modest financial success.  This period also coincided with my own career edging more towards general management and the chance to mull over between us the various organisational, financial, procedural and people issues we were encountering was actually quite rewarding and interesting for both of us.

We were all pleased when he did retire.  Running your own consultancy is not easy and the small business sector is something of a minefield; there is a constant need to drum up new accounts and opportunities, and Dad didn’t enjoy the time spent schmoozing, publicising himself, and the continual chasing up of leads that might turn out to be dead ends.  Plus he now had in addition the challenge of keeping up with the local social life that Mavis was at the heart of and, whilst she was always supportive of his work, at home she ruled the roost.  In fact she was something of an enigma; at times, especially in the kitchen, a nagging, huffing, puffing individual for whom no-one, least of all Dad, could do anything quite right.  They would bicker whenever Dad pushed back or said the wrong thing and I sometimes wondered how he tolerated it.  At least we, their children and our families, could always walk away and knew we only had to put up with it for a day or two at a time.  This characteristic was balanced by her enthusiasm for the wide range of topics that captured her interest and her genuine concern and care for family and friends.  Invariably she would do the right thing by people and it was clear, as the years went by, that she and Dad had found a formula that worked between them despite the surface niggles.

There was never a question of him enjoying a quiet retirement.  For starters there were various grandchildren arriving on the scene in Guernsey, Spain, Bristol and South Wales and excursions to ‘assist’ the busy parents needed to be factored in.  We were always grateful for the help but a few days of ‘Dad & Mavis’ often left you more drained than you were before they’d arrived.  And it wasn’t as if they were always available; in a classic example of ‘how to spend your kid’s inheritance’ they indulged in an apparent non-stop sequence of holidays.  They bought a caravan and, in typical fashion, became ardent fans for a few years; I shudder to think of the fuss and dialogue that parking the van must have involved.

They travelled widely in Europe, once driving through France to Spain and back with Mary and two children squeezed in the back. They attended various Rotarian get-togethers on the continent and then capped it all with a 12-week Round the World trip in 1993.  The chance to spend a couple of months with Rog, Jill, Joan and Ken on their own turf more than thirty years after his siblings had emigrated must have been fantastic.

It was the pattern for the decade.  Rick, working in Russia, provided the excuse to travel behind the opening Iron Curtain; they went to South Africa on a caravan safari with the Rotary organisation, and, in 1999, they joined John, Mags and their kids, Katie and Nick, on a cruise up the west coast of Canada to Alaska.  Deciding they were already nearly halfway round the world, they opted to go the long way home and so found themselves once more Down Under for a month with the Australian branch of the family.

Any spare time they had at home was absorbed by the move in 1995 from TOSH in Staunton Harold to Bywell in Llangwm, the consequent efforts to customise it to their (Mavis’s) taste and their usual full-on approach to settling into the local community.  I had to hand it to them: whilst Mavis was directing operations on various local committees and groups, Dad had become Chairman of the local Rotary, was active on the Parish Council and had helped set up a local history society. It was actually quite an honour to join them at a somewhat stuffy celebration diner to mark his time as Rotarian Chairman, even if I did have to get dressed up in full bib and tucker for only the fourth time in my life. (The other three were for Club Christmas Balls whereas this Rotarian event was considerably better behaved!)

I observed all this activity from a safe distance on the other side of the Severn Estuary.  Now a ‘mature’ adult in my forties with my own family to love and worry about, I could at last begin to fully acknowledge the efforts and achievements of his life to that point. I was content that, despite their regular bickering and Mavis’s, usually misplaced, mild complaining, they really had made an active success of their retirement and there was absolutely no doubt that, after the ups and downs of their working lives, they both deserved it.

Gradually, gradually, inevitably, they began to slow down.  The caravan was sold; they reduced their foreign excursions, spending more time with their local friends.  Their Bywell home in Llangwm became a focal point for visitors as they re-engaged with cousins and friends from earlier times.  Now in his seventies, Dad started to re-invent himself, finding time to indulge in pastimes and hobbies that had lain dormant for years.  A new hi-fi system and a rapidly expanding collection of classical and jazz CDs provided the chance to relax whilst the acquisition of one of the new PCs provided the opportunity to escape to his study for a few hours each day.  We marvelled at the depth, detail and dedication of his research into family and local history, his re-kindled enthusiasm for science and technology and the new interest he acquired for genetics, partly prompted by his desire to understand more about the syndrome Dan, his first grandson, had been born with.  He’d started to work on a number of projects and, over the course of the next few years, we were the recipients of a historical analysis of The Old School House, an incredibly thorough investigation into the origins of our surname and his masterpiece, a four hundred page autobiography that he published fifty copies of in 2006.  It was a walk through his life that shared the facts and emotions in a way we couldn’t have imagined, revealing aspects and thoughts that we were unaware of, or had never imagined or considered.

Now that I’m trying to replicate his story and do something myself, I can fully acknowledge how much effort he put into it.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before he found himself embarking on a new career; that of a carer.  Mavis was running out of energy, although she could still produce plenty of steam, especially when trying to play the hostess.  Now in her eighties she was burdened with a number of debilitating ailments; she’d had both hips replaced by 2002 but by 2010 problems with her knees were affecting her mobility, her hearing was going, her eyesight was going and, worst of all, so was her mind and short-term memory as the first signs of dementia appeared.  The next four years were hard on Dad as she became increasingly irrational and dependent; needing to be at her beck and call almost twenty-four hours a day exhausted him, leaving little time for him to exercise his own mind and body.  Family, friends, neighbours and the local authority all chipped in but it knocked the stuffing out of him.  Finally, at the beginning of 2014, following yet another fall, common sense prevailed and Mavis moved to a nursing home in Chepstow, where she died peacefully just a few weeks after celebrating her 90th birthday.  She’d led a full, enthusiastic life, and a second marriage that, perhaps surprisingly, worked out well, enabling her to travel the world, engage her many interests and play the role of hostess to the various social groups she seemed to attract.

A widower again, he experienced sadness balanced by some relief that the difficulties of the final few years were now over.  He had a chance to look outwards again. With time now on his hands, there were opportunities to re-engage more with the wider world rather than just the family and the comfortable, close knit community of Llangwm.  Problem was, he’d been worn down by the last few years of caring, the constant demands and the need to always be in a state of high alert.  By then in his eighties, he was beginning to run out of both steam and motivation; having hardly exercised for a decade, he started to find any extended walk an effort and, without the commitment to try and ‘get fitter,’ this manifested in a decline in strength and energy.  A problem with the retina eventually led to him being blind in one eye and an understandable nervousness about driving.  Fortunately he didn’t just give up; encouraged by the rest of the family, he made a memorable trip to visit his siblings in Australia, and visited old friends, Ted and Joan, and the cousins in Nottingham.  And from the study hiding-hole emerged an epilogue to his autobiography and a thoroughly researched, detailed account of the wartime experiences of his uncles.

Increasingly though he was happy to sit in front of the telly watching sport and documentaries, read the Daily Telegraph on his tablet and rely for his meals on regular deliveries or his twice-a-week trip up the road to Jack and Nick’s for a meal and company.  Clearly Bywell was rapidly becoming too big and he didn’t need much persuasion to accept the brilliant offer by Jackie and Nick to move into a newly created annexe at Trem Hafren.  It wasn’t a moment too soon.  Covid lockdown, a fall which resulted in a six-week hospital stay and the need for a pacemaker, and a mind that was beginning to struggle to process things at the rate he was accustomed to, all combined to suddenly change him.  From a man who would take responsibility for everything, he suddenly morphed into someone happy to sit in his new, all-singing-all-dancing chair, watch the football and cricket, be fed, watered and entertained by Jackie, Nick and any visitors who chose to pop by, and delegate all decision making to the family.  And why not?  No-one can say he didn’t deserve it.

We occasionally found it hard to accept.  This wasn’t the Dad we’d known for most of our lives but we had to acknowledge that he’d just had enough and, throughout 2021, it was clear we were on the final approach.  I’d phone for a chat about Forest’s latest match, we’d zoom with Australia, and we’d grumble about politics but he struggled to hold his focus for any length of time.  There were some positives: despite being increasingly immobile, he was comfortable; despite the inroads of prostate cancer and a failing heart, he wasn’t in pain; despite the frustrations of a mind that wasn’t as sharp as he wished, he reluctantly accepted it

‘He’s gone,’  Jack said quietly when I answered the phone, early in the morning on 21st November.

The tributes arrived from far and wide.  Of course people will want to share positive words and memories at such an occasion but the genuine warmth and appreciation of the time they had spent with Dad, whether over his life or for just a few years, was quite moving.

Who was this man?

To his siblings he was an inspiration……more than just a big brother, virtually a proxy father. 

To his children….. he tried to do the best for us, setting an example, always being there.

To Mum and Mavis … he devoted himself.

To everyone else …….the reliable friend and colleague.

The eulogy at his funeral is my fitting summary.

Dad’s Service

Not many of you can remember Dad in his younger days.  As a school boy from a terraced council house, as an enthusiastic member of the Boys’ Brigade, dating Mum as an eighteen-year old, the first one in the family to go to university, hitched at 24, happily married, devoted father to three young kids, an engineer, a stroke-survivor, a carer and, sadly, a single-parent aged just 44.

More of you will find it easier to recall memories from more recent decades.  The ex-pat boss for Rolls-Royce in Egypt, the new husband after his marriage to Mavis, the new step-father to grown-up children, John and Mary, the retired businessman, the traveller who went round the world (twice), the Rotarian, the local historian, the Welsh croquet player, the caravaner and maybe best of all, the friend and the grandparent.

Oh ..I nearly forgot… the ‘author’.

In fact I don’t actually need to go into the real details of his full and varied life, his opinions, his experiences and thoughts.  He’s saved me the trouble!  So if you want to find out all the nitty-gritty, you can read it yourself in his book.  It’s a good read and copies are available in the foyer, although sadly it’s no longer possible to get an autographed copy.

However the book, whilst meticulously researched and hugely interesting, doesn’t do him full justice.  It’s big on facts and experiences but rather ‘light’ on ‘Mick the person’.  Maybe, as an engineer, he didn’t tend to dwell on the softer stuff.  Maybe he didn’t see himself the way the rest of us did.  Maybe he was just too modest to blow his own trumpet.

So let me take the opportunity to expose something of the real ‘Mick’; the person behind the hard facts, especially as he’s no longer in a position now to contradict or be embarrassed by anything I say.

Of course this could take all morning and everyone here, or listening in, will have their own views and opinions.  But I’m the one with the microphone, so I’m just going to do what was suggested by Nick when we were discussing how to go about an eulogy and just focus on a few themes that have run consistently throughout the whole of his life:

Sport; his thirst for knowledge; his involvement with the community; and of course his love of family life.

Let’s begin with sport.

Well, if you’ve grown up in West Bridgford, there’s really no excuse.  Only a stone’s throw from the Forest football ground and Trent Bridge, it was inevitable he’d be a life-long football and cricket fan.  As boy with his Dad, as a brother with Roger, as a father with his kids and, just once, with his grandchildren, Stuart and Murray, he’d be there on the terraces or in the stands, cheering or grumbling as his team’s fortunes fluctuated.

I’m not too sure he was any good at sport himself.  There are a few photos of him in football or cricket kit but the family folklore is devoid of any heroic goal-scoring feats or match-winning batting performances. My memories of Dad the sportsman are of someone who enjoyed swimming, could play a decent game of tennis (despite having, as a result of his stroke that damaged the nerves in his left-hand, to develop a serve that involved throwing the ball upwards with his racket hand.)

I rarely saw him run. In fact the only time I can easily recall was in 1978.  Forest were playing at Wembley in the League Cup Final against Liverpool.  None of us had been there before and we’d managed to get tickets.  Driving down from Nottingham was a nightmare with traffic-jams.  We had to park miles away and were forced to leg it to get there for the start.  I think it was probably the second half before he’d recovered.

So, whilst he might not have been the greatest sportsman, he was an avid sports follower.  He supported us as children.  He took pride in our achievements and it’s been the same with his grandchildren, whether it’s been kayaking, swimming, riding, running or anything else.

And he’s never abandoned his teams.  Luckily for him, he’s witnessed Forest win the FA Cup, the First Division and, amazingly, the European Cup - twice.  He was there at Trent Bridge in the Forties with his mate, Ted Mills, to see Bradman; he was there again with me in 1977 to see Ian Botham’s debut against the Aussies.

Even recently, confined to his luxury reclining chair in the conservatory at Trem Hafren, he’s wiled away the hours in the company of Sky Sport.  Apparently not a great fan of the modern game, as he repeatedly told Nick, he would nevertheless insist on watching every minute of the 20:20 cricket, the women’s football, the Welsh rugby and so on.  In fact pretty much anything that involved a ball.

What I’ll miss most is our weekly phone call that always included, high on the agenda, a discussion about Forest’s latest 0:0 draw or England’s latest batting collapse.

Another theme is his ‘Quest for Knowledge’.  He didn’t just want to know ‘what’ or ‘where’; he needed to know ‘how’.  It’s probably the engineer in him again but he just had to ‘look under the bonnet’ for a whole range of subjects from history to geography, from science to politics.

Take genetics: the condition that Dan inherited prompted him to dive into the detail of what, just 30 years ago, was cutting-edge science.  Before we knew it, there were several shelves on the book case taken over by books on the subject and he’d even started to participate in genetic studies.  I’m not sure he’d have won Mastermind on the subject but it fascinated him ever since.

And how about ‘Family History’?  He caught the bug helping Jackie with a school project back in the seventies and has meticulously researched it over the decades, most of his efforts in the days before the Web made things much easier.  He managed to trace our line back to an Abraham Sheath who ‘departed this life’ in 1783 and his study was always rammed with files, journals and documents, carefully itemised and labelled.  At least none of the rest of us need to go to the trouble - he’s done all the work for us.

More recently, he’s been involved with local history.  Maybe it was triggered by his research into the social and architectural background of their former home, The Old School House, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, where he and Mavis lived for 15 years.   But when they moved to Wales in 1995, he had the chance to learn about an area he knew little about.  In fact it was a mini-culture shock to him as I don’t think he was expecting quite the positive impact that the landscape and the people, with their pride in their language and history, would have on him.  Fascinated by the history and stories around Usk and Llangwm, it didn’t take him long to help establish a local history society.   Even just a few months ago, he was explaining to me about ancient tracks that linked hill top and valley settlements in the area in pre-medieval times.

And this leads nicely into another feature of his life that says so much about him.  He just couldn’t help getting involved and helping out the community.

As a parent he wasn’t content to watch from the sidelines.  He’d be helping the PTA at the school, officiating at swimming galas, ferrying a carload of kids across Nottingham for their training session, and, with Mum, he’d be nurturing and building a network of lasting friendships.

Later, with Mavis, they would jump into everything with both feet.  Whether it was in Cairo, Ashby or Llangwm, the story would be the same. In fact, if we ever phoned to see if they were available for a spot of babysitting, the answer was invariably ‘ love to but it’s a bit tricky - we’ve got Rotary/ local history/ croquet/ friends coming round or there’s some other village do going on.’

They embraced everything.  Mavis the driving force, Dad the steady, reliable knowledgeable guy who didn’t feel he needed to be the centre of everything, just happy to be in the company of others.

Finally, finally the last theme to touch on is his love of family life.

We’re not talking just his immediate family, the product of two happy marriages, but the much larger broader family.  His cousins from his childhood in Nottingham where they grew up in each other’s pockets whilst their fathers were away during the War; Mum’s cousins and their families, one of whom, my godmother Joan, married his best mate Ted; his brother, Roger, and sister, Joan, both of whom emigrated and have established another branch of the family in Australia.  And his new relations that came along with his marriage to Mavis.

He loved being part of everyone’s lives, watching his grandchildren grow up and sharing their interests.  He was never happier than when we all managed to get together and he could relax in the general hubbub of everything going on around him.  He was so pleased that we persuaded him to make the trip to Australia just a few years ago to see Roger, Jill, Joan and their families.

And here’s the thing: the strength of all of our family bonds is largely due to him.  He worked so hard to keep us all in touch and to support everyone when they’ve needed some help across all the generations.

I think, no I’m sure, we all think he did a great job.  So on behalf of all his family and friends, I’ll finish with a big, heartfelt, ‘Well Done, and Thank You Dad’.

24/11/2021

Elgar - Enigma Variations

The Seekers - The Carnival Is Over

Glen Miller - Adios

Oscar Peterson - Rosemary’s tomatoes

A note on his brother and sister:

They might have spent 50 years living 12,000 miles away from each other but they and their families have always remained close.  Fortunately they managed the occasional visit in both directions and increasingly sophisticated communications of Zoom and Facebook has helped maintain the bonds.   Whenever anyone from the UK branch of the family has travelled Down Under they've always been hosted brilliantly, and, whilst Roger and Jill haven't been able to 'visit home' for a few decades now, Joan has managed a couple of recent trips.   Sadly her most recent visit, delayed a year by Covid, was a few months after Dad died but we delayed his memorial service at the Llangwm village hall to ensure she could attend.   Typical of Joan, always a traveller at heart, even in her slightly muddled and less-mobile eighties, taking the chance to chase off around the UK to visit family and friends and combining it with excursions to Europe for several weeks of sightseeing and a few days in Berlin with Rick and Carla.