Dad started life in a small terrace in Quorn Road off Uppingham Road in Leicester, overlooking Sparrow Park and the Uppingham Hotel. He lived with his parents, Albert and Rose, and his beloved grandfather - his buddy, ‘Timber Woods.’
He had lots of extended family in the surrounding streets including his cousins, Miriam and Nora, and his second cousins, Len and Marg, Gwen and Jill. Dad was an only child but he always described Len as like a brother to him, and later, when Len married Miriam and Dad married mum, they were all four of them best friends as well as family. Dad never stopped missing Len and Miriam after they died. He and Marg stayed close for their whole lives.
One of Dads earliest memories was going with his granddad to the Uppingham hotel - in those days a farmers’ pub - and the excitement of going to see the farmers’ ponies in the court yard.
Horses were always love of Dad’s life. Sally and I were brought up on bedtime stories of his times at the farm in Barkby where, as a boy, he used to help, working the huge farm horses and the machinery they pulled, sometimes working entirely on his own and some miles from any adult. We won’t be the only ones who know the story of the float pony that bolted with him when he already had an arm in plaster, or the story about the usually well behaved Blackie who bolted at the sight of a midland red bus as Dad was on his way with her to fetch water from Beeby.
Dad said he once knitted was a pair of reins for his rocking horse so he could hold them when he was ill in bed with what at the time was though to be chronic bronchitis.
I think dad was very surprised to find himself the last one standing of his generation because he was often told he was the runt of the family. He missed several years of schooling and was told he should conserve his energy. As well as bronchitis, he also survived diphtheria. He was sent to a open air school in Western Park for children with chronic illnesses. His time there involved lots of outdoor activities which contributed to his love of being outside where later as an adult he would spend much of his free time.
Dad left school aged 14 in 1939, the year the second world war broke out.
He joined up on his eighteen birthday,
Although he volunteered to go to the South Pacific, he was saved from going because he had a skin condition and couldn’t sweat. Dad told the story of how during his final medical before embarkation, the doctor said to him, ‘on your way laddie, you’ll be more trouble than you are worth,’ and stamped his pass book ‘temperate climates only’. That may well have saved his life. Of the crowd of friends on Humberstone Garden City he had before the war, only Dad and one other man came back.
So Dad spent the war in Scotland in the Royal Airforce though he never flew a plane. He was in the marine section of the RAF first at the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment at Rhu near Helensburgh and then at Corsewall near Stranraer, spending the war on boats rescuing ships and planes that had come down in the sea.
He used to say his war was with the sea but he retained a strong connection to Scotland for the rest of his life. He would talk positively of his war years, of comradeship, of making do, and making most of his leave, as well of some of his hairier experiences. He took part in the capitulation of the U-boats at the end of the war and one of his stories was of a young German prisoner of war who dad built up a strong friendship with. They had planned on keeping in contact but the German lad was shipped out one night at short notice when dad was in sick bay. Dad was always sad that this connection had been lost.
Dad ever resourceful, also spoke of trading rations to the wrens in exchange for stockings as wearing the stockings under their uniform trousers helped to keep the boat crews warm.
After the war he found it very difficult to go back to working indoors with noisy machinery. The strict guilds of the time wouldn’t allow his to be a pattern maker as he wanted because he hadn’t had an apprenticeship as one so he left and eventually set uphill own business - Humberstone engineering.
He married Mum in 1952 though he had known her for quite a while before as their gardens backed onto each other in Garden City. He used to tell the story that it was amazing they ever got together as at a dance while he was home on leave she had asked him for a dance during a ladies’s excuse me and he had not been very gallant as he didn’t want to dance with a woman in uniform - he was fed up go women in uniform.
Later, it seemed to be mum who made the moves when she went to sit with him on the bus and invited his to go and play badminton with her. That lead to a marriage which lasted nearly 70 years. Mum helped dad with the business as his secretary and deliverer as well as someone to discuss things with. Dad used to say, he and Mum were a team.
Dad worked hard, long hours and I can remember even at Thurnby. Mum putting in his dinner in the oven to keep it warm because he was working late. Dad enjoyed his work, taking great pride in it and appreciating how people came to him for answers to their problems.
Scotland birthed dad’s love of boats - he learnt to sale in the lochs around the clyde and later built his own boat with the help of a friend- a day cruiser he named 'Timber'.
He bought Downriver, a bungalow on the Norfolk Broads in the early sixties and that became our beloved holiday home which he shared with the wider family and friends. We have lots of happy memories of being tied on to the bows of Timber as young children with ropes so we could enjoy the fun of that in safety, of sailing across Hickling, going to the beach at Winterton, and Dad going to the pub with neighbours on the river bank and delivering everyone home in Timber when the pub shut.
In the late eighties, he became a granddad, first to Robert and then to Jenny. Jenny remembers how her granddad could always find the good in anything so now when she eats iceberg lettuce and kettle crisps she things of her granddad eating them and saying how wonderfully crunchy they were. She recalls the many times her granddad told the stories of the people in his life and also how he commented that he could remember those little details of years ago yet couldn’t remember why he’d had for lunch that day. People mattered to him, she says and she has found memories of granddad in his sailing boat - of teaching her and Rob how to sail and how happy and at home he was on the water.
After Mum and Dad retired, they had some years of going abroad to places like Spain and Cyprus. They also took up bowling and through the winter months would go perhaps twice a week to melton bowls club where they found new friends.
He damaged his back as a fairly young man but was still sailing well into his eighty - as well as climbing the poplar trees in the garden to prune them, and climbing onto the roof at downriver to paint and repair it.
His life spanned almost a whole century. His earliest memories were watching the lamp lighter coming round at night to light the gas street lamps. The last months of his life involved speaking to his friends and family on Zoom.
He liked to the outdoor life. He was deeply sociable. Dad loved the Judith Durham and the Seekers, Petula Clarke and Abba, he loved big bands and Glen Miller. Hi favourite film was Mama Mia.
He was a practical man, an engineer, a boat builder, a sailor, a horse lover, a farm worker, he was involved in theatre entertainment in the forces. He has a great sense of humour he sent Sally to the primary school fancy dress competition dressed in bandages to advertise the school keep fit class.She won first prize. He took pride in doing a job well, he was generous, ready help where help was needed, honest.
He had secret sensitivities He remembered lines of the poetry he had learnt off by heart at school.He had a feel for the music when he danced.
Dad he loved big bands and Glen Miller. He loved Judith Durham and the Seekers, Petula Clarke and Abba. Hi favourite film was Mama Mia.
He loved boats and motorbikes.
He liked the outdoor life. He was deeply sociable with an ability to see the best in people.
The last years with Mum’s Alzheimer’s were very very hard for him - he once said he wanted to outlive her so that he could take care of her - and he did. Nevertheless, he remained open to enjoying himself - coming with mum to the dance group we set up for people with dementia, going out for lunch to a nice country pub or for a car picnic overlooking Rutland water or The Eyebrook reservoir. He so loved and appreciated the new people that came into his life because of mum’s illness - Kristina, Annette and Lynette who helped run the dance group, Jean andJohn, Liz, Arlene, Jackie and Jenny, Sammy, Donna our carers.
Dad was a Leicester man who counted himself lucky to live where he did. He retained his love of the Leicestershire and Rutland countryside - of being able to get out into the country so quickly from his home.
He loved his family - and you didn’t have to be related for him to consider you family - and he loved his his friends.
