Notes from a grumpy old man, calling civilisation’……….

I stressed about having a private funeral and I asked as many people as I could for their thoughts on this. ‘Do what you think is the best’, was always the safe, non-controversial reply. So, I took the safe route, and it was a simple, heartfelt and a very peaceful and private way to say goodbye to my wife of 49 yrs. Underneath, this gruff, hardened exterior is a big softie. I was told by Mrs. E. what I was to wear (she always did tell me what to wear) and I was to have a good sob, so it was a 2/2 for me.

I was in the full tartan fancy dress, and I think for the first time with my medals. As this outfit does not get worn much, I might just start wearing it for everyday use. Either that or I might get a tattoo, grow a ponytail (don’t mock, I could if I really wanted to – alright, perhaps, some hair extensions). Then I would buy a big motorbike and use up my collection of ‘Ozzie Rocks’, black t-shirts.

Back to the actual funeral day. My friend Mr B who lives, thankfully at the other end of the county. Well, not really a ‘friend’. You know when you see a stray, sad-eyed, dog and you throw it a few titbits and give it a pat and then much to your horror it follows you home. Well, that’s him! He is just full of home-spun wisdom, for example, on the day, Mr B’s advice to see me through the funeral was:
1) Check to see if you have still got your slippers on.
2) Switch off your mobile.

Well, I only got 1/2. I did make sure the phone was off, there would have be a pretty sure chance that if it did ring it would be him to remind me again to switch my phone off.

Chris's brother gave a very good eulogy about her to an audience of two.
After attending school at Rothwell, she had made an early choice of going into the caring profession. Her mother was blind, so it was no surprise she went to work for the RNIB at Rushton Hall. This was a school for primary aged children. Most of whom were suffering from Rubella, a horrible virus that caused both deafness and blindness. Perhaps, those that are conspiracy writing about the MMR jab should be forcibly dragged into institutions to watch, learn and weep!
The headmaster of the school, and a good few of the teachers were also blind. Those with sight, had weekly sessions where they were required to wear blindfolds and walk around the school to find various rooms and do various tasks. A fact, I often reminded her off when she asked to 'put the lights' on the house. After she left there, we often went back, as we were good friends of the caretaker and had free rein of this magnificent building. The kids were very active and often enjoyed mock fighting with me on judo mats. Not sure if that’s allowed anymore.

It was during the early 70’s that the CARE Village at Shangton, just outside Harborough, finally raised enough money to finish building a ‘farm community’ for mentally handicapped adults. It was to be a ‘home for life’ and at the time was seen as a new exciting project, providing work and a home, all within a high-standard environment. Let me tell you, at the time it was an exciting new project. It soon, and rightly so, received a lot of criticism for its remoteness and lack of community involvement (out of sight, out of mind). Residential staff lived (on or off duty) alongside the residents. It took a particular type of person to work in this rather remote setting.
Despite the tut-tutting by the social workers, they soon saw it as a means of moving their most difficult clients out of LA care. Like a dog that barks at you and still wags its tail.
We had some very difficult and violent people in the early days. Epilepsy was common and the drugs used at that time had some terrible side-effects.

By a strange coincidence Chris and I joined this charity on the same day. The pay was disgracefully low, we ate, worked and lived with the residents 24 hrs a day. Chris’s role amongst the unruly, young female staff at the time was that of the mother hen. Our flat was the place everyone came to, in between the many split-shift days. I am sure they used to constantly talk about me, while eating large quantities of MY toast. Chris was at the centre of this witch’s coven. Being a close-knit community, at times with a lot of stress, we became lifelong friends with this lot. Yes, Maggie, Liz, Michele, Karen, Guiliana, Caroline - don’t deny it! Don’t you, the reader, now feel sorry for me? Up until recently most of us met every year for a Burns Night and this lasted for about 38 yrs.

I was married to dear Christine at Shangton Church, on Easter Monday 19th April 1976. If you are one of these people that easily forgets anniversary dates DO NOT get married on an Easter Monday! It was an international event – my family from Scotland applied for passports and got their vaccinations. Armed with English/Scots phrase books met with English, Welsh and Norwegian guests. We had our reception at the Crown Inn at Tur Langton; at the time this was ‘the’ place to go for wedding receptions. Long before wedding themed Zoo’s and places like Tesco car parks etc became de rigueur. Just for record we had steak and chips (it wasn’t called that on the menu) feeding 50 guests at a cost of £160 AND that included the toast drinks!

Now just to place this in our history. Brotherhood of Man was Top of the Pops, with ‘Save All Your Kisses for Me’. James Callaghan became Prime Minister that month. I wore a brown suit with flare trousers and zip-up boots and had long shoulder length hair, enough of that, I think we will move on now.

Anyway, we worked there for 10 years and the charity by this time had expanded nationally with village communities throughout England. I, by now, became ‘Assistant to the Manager’ and was often sent (without Chris) to other communities to baby-sit while their manager went on holiday or had left in a ‘huff’.

Eventually, we were both invited to a big meeting regarding our future with the organisation. We were spun a yarn and flattered by buzz words and offered a new exciting ‘career opportunity’ for the both of us.

We were to move to Burton Rough just outside Petworth in West Sussex. I was to be the Assistant Manager and Chris was to take charge of a new unit being set-up there. The situation was a very old Victorian house that had been given to CARE (free) that housed 30 elderly mentally handicapped men. All of whom had been shuffled out of sight 40- 50 years ago, by their loving, now dead, wealthy parents. They were a great bunch of ‘gentleman characters’, there was always a fight to get at the ½ dozen Daily Telegraphs that were delivered in the morning while they dozed the day away in the sun lounge, as if it was like some sort of gentleman’s club. It had the most wonderful wall-garden, and I remember setting up a TV and speakers and listening to ‘Live Aid’ all day. Some of the gents amongst us wanted 'The Proms' but in the end even they all joined in. It was a day where we all came together and as near as a ‘family’ as 30 plus people could possibly be.

So, what of Chris’s special unit. Well, just because you were mentally handicapped doesn’t stop you from also being mentally ill. Just to add these afflictions there was a fair chance of early dementia. That was her role, with assistance of course, to look after those now in this state. The work involved a very early start to take over from the night staff. So, it was, I would kick her out of bed at 6 in the morning and with any lip from her I would remind her, I was in charge, and she had to do what I said. I then buried my head under the pillow while various bed-side lamps and alarm clocks were thrown at me (thats a joke, I think it may have been a wardrobe!) What was no joke, was we were there the night of the big storm, 15th Oct 1987. We were without mains electricity for THREE MONTHS!

The real reason why we were sent there was also increasingly obvious. These guys needed a kick up the backside and the staff were in it for a simple, easy life. What didn’t help was a very ‘soft, by kindly manager’. Annual leave was on an office wall chart. What was happening, staff were booking annual leave at the beginning of the year and then afterwards moving their 'strip' to later on. Chris told me this after hearing one of them mentioned about how to get double holidays – see it does pay to listen to gossip!

CARE wanted from Chris some stability in the house and a person that could provide reassurance and continuity. This was because we were now going to introduce female residents. Not all the ‘gentlemen’ were for these ‘bossy troublemakers’ having only ever experienced 'bossy female staff' all their lives. If that wasn’t a bombshell enough for them, CARE was closing the building down and we were moving the whole lot over the South Downs to Walberton (next to Fontwell racecourse, near Chichester). It was to be a newly built village community that just happened to be in a 20-acre orchard. For some of the residents Burton Rough had been their home for 50 years.

That was a period in our lives where we worked the hardest. While the place was being built, we bussed those that could work to the orchard daily for about a year. The big move itself took a whole week to get everyone over to Walberton. It was a manoeuvre equal to the D-Day landings. Chris and her team had the task of reassuring some very elderly confused people that everything was going to be all right and yes, all their worldly possessions were going to go with them. Importantly, staff currently working with them were coming as well. Most of the old staff had gone by now, scared off by the prospect of some hard work. (I wonder who got that job!) The new ones, were to again, become good friends and soon the old party tricks and pranks we had been innocently subject to at Shangton were soon replayed on the Walberton staff. If you are not sure what I am talking about, ask me to show you how to play Wagga, Wagga!

What held the staff together at this time was a common hatred for the new manager – a useless, bad tempered, individual. Luckily, she would for days and eventually for weeks-on-end, lock herself away in her house with the curtains closed, suffering from some sort of aversion to sunlight, I think.
Her house overlooked the estate and often the curtains would twitch during the day, and I would be later confronted with a list of minor misdemeanours (mostly mine), on the odd occasion when I would be summoned to her house. She was from Northern Ireland, and the rumour was she was a trained terrorist sniper. She had several large garden gnomes in her front garden, and we used to, under the cover of darkness, and at great risk of being shot, moved them around to different spots. One actually went on holiday and sent her a postcard with its picture from Hong Kong. Soon after I left she was handed a large swad of the charity’s money and she went scuttling back to her fox-hole in Ireland.

We did this for five years! The orchard with 22 different apple species was a joy and an escape route. Chris and I worked together. Everyone mucked in during the picking and pruning seasons. Chris oversaw the ‘farm shop’ and her petty cash system would have been the envy of the Santander Bank. We tried to turn it into an organic orchard, but it was quite hard as the trees were very old and subject to codling moth and wasp infestation. A different subject I know, but if you are interested, buy me a drink, and I’ll tell you all about the little buggers.
And another thing. If the apple blossom was out (quite a sight), and if a frost was due, we would spray water over the trees in the late evening. This froze and somehow protected the flowers. That was even a better sight to see all those crystal trees in the morning. I never did understand how that worked.

Moving on to 1989. I had left CARE by now and both, of us were pretty worn out. Chris’s Mum and Dad in Rothwell needed help. We had a house in Market Harborough and our off time seemed to be spent (alternative weekends) driving from Sussex on a Friday evening and back down the M1 on a Sunday evening. This was all before the M25 was finished! I remember one occasion when Chris had driven on her own back to Sussex, she had gone through Hungerford on the day of the mass shooting, thankfully completely oblivious to what was about to happen later that day.
Another similar event was when we were staying at a friend’s house in Holland. We were due to catch the ferry the next morning from Zeebrugge, I can only assume it would have been the ‘Herald of Free Enterprise’. We were then diverted on the day to get another ferry from Dieppe. The atmosphere on the boat was horrendous. I can clearly remember the captain reassuring the passengers that the front doors were checked and closed – he knew exactly the cause of the accident long before it became official.

I digress. Moving back to Leicestershire (jobless) I noted that it was becoming a bit like the wild west, and it needed taming, so I joined the Police.
At the time, and at the age of 39, I was Leicestershire’s oldest recruit. From the interview to my first day took three months but I was by now caught up in the running boom. Chris was sent back to work to support my future objective to be an Olympic Marathon gold medallist. She was a part-time seamstress at a local authority care home. Having an O’level in needlework stood her in good stead. Anyway, when she discovered that one day’s pay of a PC equaled her weekly pay packet that was soon jacked in, she from then on became a kept woman.

This I will call stage three. Freedom combined with a bit more money enabled us to do some travelling (no flying, that definitely was a no-no). We first had a camper van, and we travelled many miles in this. With days off mid-week and extended holidays we took the opportunity to explore the UK. This did take a couple of years to do. Covering every bit of the UK’s and Ireland's coastline. I had borrowed one of those huge VHF cameras with the huge cassette and filmed all the interesting bits. Soon after we had done all this, Chris taped an episode of Coronation Street over it!

We next assumed a more sedate wondering life, and went the gypsy way and bought a caravan! She did make a living telling fortunes – mostly about MY future while I sat on the caravan step carving clothes pegs. This time it was France; we both just loved the French café culture and especially the motorways. For about 5 years we hauled our ‘wee hoose’ on wheels over the Channel. We had some great holidays and have a lot of good memories of France. In those days you could buy a season ticket for the year at half-price from the ferry company.

One other adventure of note was three weeks visiting Chris’s cousin in Norway. Driving way past the Arctic Circle in a little Ford Fiesta. A real adventure, I remember the snow drifts being 5 mts high in places and driving over frozen lakes – that didn’t please Mrs E one bit!

Soon it was shift-work with Leicestershire Police. My first five years working in the lovely cosmopolitan city of Leicester. The time of big riots and violent football matches. Looking for a quieter life I transferred to Harborough and joined my ‘shift’ (work colleagues), we again became very good friends with all of them. We both enjoyed a busy social life with their wives and had regular visits to Leicester curry houses. Chris always said they were a great group, and she knew they were the go-to people if anything happened. However, she always remembers being woken up by two of them, who she knew very well, in the middle of the night, to ask if they could borrow my camera. I had crashed a police car just outside Fleckney and they were now going to the scene to take photographs! They did it this way to get around the 'protocol', which was a senior officer, or the control room Inspector should have been the one to speak to the wife. I had during my time in the city been taken to the hospital twice and it wasn’t a nice experience for Chris to have a big police car turn up at the house with the news that your husband had been injured on duty. They knew this, and wanted to assure her all was OK and that she might be getting a phone call and to act surprised. It was a really nice thing to do. Although they did plaster the parade room wall with images of me next to 'slightly' dented police car at ‘Elder’s Elbow’. They even named the place after me!

I think, maybe at times, I was a bit of a worry to her!

After taking early retirement from the Police, we still made sure we went out as much as we could. We became good reviewers of disabled toilets all over the country. Premier Inns, disabled rooms often knocked spots off some hotels 3 or 4 times more expensive who advertised supposedly accessible rooms.

So, let’s get closer, I think it would be no understatement to say that peoples first impression of Chris was tainted. I often said if she was an alcoholic or drug addict she would have got more sympathy from some supposedly professional people. Chris’s weight issue was not caused by laziness, it was not self-inflicted, enough said.

She was my wife for 49 years and I could not have asked for better company.

'I will ride, I will fly. Chase the wind and touch the sky'.

I know this quote is a bit 'naff' but its for someone in a wheel chair for nearly 10 yrs of their life.