Adieu, Dad

His struggle and frustration with his deteriorating health is over. My Dad George, who many people knew as Stan, died in the Royal Surrey County Hospital just as the sun was rising over Guildford cathedral on 25th October. Thankfully, I was with him. He simply faded away in in his sleep, just as he wanted.

Given the pleasure he got from the internet after he had a PC for his 80th birthday eight years ago, it seems appropriate that I post these words from his brother John on these pages. I'm sure, too, Dad would have loved the idea that his friends and family in far-flung places (or closer to home) could add to this post with their own memories. John's recovering from an operation so couldn't be at the funeral so his eulogy was read by Jill, his wife.

We also read the final part of 'Hiawatha's Departure' as a reminder of Dad's love of words and the fun he and I had reading the 'Song of Hiawatha' alound when I was a child. I had to include 'Do not go gentle into that good night'; I don't think he knew this poem but it helped me understand his anger and frustration with what life had become for him.

BROTHER JOHN’S EULOGY TO GEORGE

"First let me say what a great sadness it is that I cannot be here myself to say farewell to my brother.

It is remarkable that we spent so much time apart. At age 14 he fell in love with Iris and became practically a part of the Rattray household, which I must say was jollier than ours and suited the outgoing part of George’s nature.

The war, of course, separated our family as it did thousands of others.

In 1938 the threat of fascism was in the air and at age 18 George joined the 9^th Battalion of the Middlesex regiment of the Territorial Army. He was embodied into the regular forces before the war began.

In the TA his officer qualities were noted and he was commissioned. After serving some time with Searchlight batteries of the Royal Artillery in this country, he was posted to join the Kings’ African Rifles in Kenya. He served with them through the operations in Burma and then returned to Kenya. Another part of the separation caused by the war, I joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 so we never met up during the war at all.

He was later awarded a Territorial decoration for long service in the ‘Terries’.

When hostilities ceased George was demobbed in Kenya and at the young age of 25 was given the job of running a huge estate in Kenya. He loved the job and the African people.

Having married early in the war, Iris joined George in Kenya and stayed with him until the Mau Mau atrocities so terrified her that they returned to the UK. George brought back with him his love of the African people and a facility with Ki-Swahili, with which later he entertained Sarah and me.

He then worked for the Income Tax department until the Broads called him where he and Iris joined Iris’s sister and her husband – Ollie and Vic. It was typical of George, that when his request to the Income Tax Department for a transfer to Norfolk was refused, he just went anyway and soon joined the Norfolk County Council’s local Education Administration Department where he stayed until retirement.

He, Iris and Sarah became an important part of the Catfield community and Sarah still has friends from that time. He was Parish Councillor and a very active member of the local British legion, regularly bearing the legion’s standard at local and regional events and being awarded a gold badge for his work. In 1971 he and Iris were invited to a garden party at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the Legion’s golden jubilee year. George also became a mason. He really appreciated the fellowship and good works of the masons and in time he became Master of his Lodge. He was dedicated to the practical welfare of members of both groups and other local people in need, as was Iris.

It was here that Margaret and I, and later Jill , my second wife and I, were asked to stay and invited to Masonic dinners where we saw George at his most popular and outgoing self.

After Iris died George remarried and moved to a beautiful part of Scotland – which was his new wife’s birthplace. He had always enjoyed travelling – indeed he and Iris had earlier been pioneers of motorcycle combination travel and went to Spain with two friends.

In Scotland he saw my elder son Christopher regularly and a strong relationship developed. It is Christopher’s great regret that he is unable to be here today.

After his second wife died George came to Farnham to be near Sarah and lived in a retirement home until his recent illness. It was here that he met Florence who was a very good and supportive friend throughout. Jill and I visited them both several times and enjoyed their company. George came to life at family gatherings and was very popular with the younger members.

Even with the separations through our lives there was a strong bond of brotherhood between us - in fact he was ‘bruv’ and I was ‘uverbruv’ to George.

In fact as I have got older I have realised how much like him I am – in speech and mannerisms. Jill often says – gosh that was George!

George was a very loving father to a very loving daughter. Sarah’s devotion to him during the frustrating time when he was tied to his flat at the end of an oxygen line was a tribute to their mutual love. I must here mention how supportive Jonathan, Sarah’s partner, has been throughout. It was good to know that George, after a brief showing of his old self in hospital, died peacefully with Sarah by his side.

Sadly he always seemed to underestimate his achievements which were remarkable.

Throughout, George was always George. He was straight and open; you knew where you stood with him; and you always knew that he cared for you."

Charlie is our Darling

Circé loved having her first doggy houseguest to stay last month. Charlie is a three-year-old retriever who belongs to our friends Viv and John. He’s the strong, silent type (Charlie, that is); when he’s not bouncing about enjoying a game of tug or finding interesting smelly things to roll around in when he’s out for a walk, he likes to sit quietly and watch what’s going on.

Viv and John brought Charlie on his first trip abroad for a few days over Whitsun half-term. But he’s still with us because when they arrived at Calais on their way back to Cardiff the Pet Passport officials told them he couldn’t enter the UK until the end of July. There was no movement on this decision even after a fraught couple of hours on the phone so, given Viv had to be back in front of her French classes after half-term, their options were pretty limited. Either Charlie had to be quarantined or he could come back to continue his holidays with us.

Our rendez-vous on that gloomy Saturday afternoon was by a particularly mucky farm just off the A26 north of Laon, roughly half-way between us and the coast. Circé came with us and was very excited to see Charlie again; Charlie seemed completely unperturbed by the idea of getting out of his car and getting into the back of our Scenic with Circé. Viv and John, of course, were as distraught as Jonathan and I would have been if Circé had been the doggy sans-papiers.

Once they were back in Wales Viv and John were able to confirm with their vet and the UK authorities exactly what the problem was. Charlie had his first rabies jab a couple of years ago before he was micro-chipped. Even though he had been chipped by the time he’d had his blood test to confirm his immunity and has subsequently had a couple of boosters, the fine print of the Pet Passport Scheme is quite clear. The animal must be micro-chipped before being vaccinated against rabies.

I’m not sure I understand, though, why Charlie’s become a Pet Passport refugee. If the object is to prevent canine identity fraud, it’s easy to demonstrate Charlie’s no criminal. He has documentation bearing his microchip number which shows he’s immune to rabies and it’s not hard to check that it really is his microchip. There’s no doubt that protecting the UK against the ravages of rabies is a serious business but I don’t see how detaining an obviously immune dog in France for what seems like an arbitrary period (until the six-month anniversary of his last booster) helps in this fight.

In the meantime, Circé clearly sees Charlie as a role-model and watches him carefully to see just how grown up Labrador retrievers should behave. She’s been much less excitable and puppy-ish over the past few weeks and I’m sure that’s much more to do with Charlie’s influence than any training we’ve been trying to drum into her usually deaf ears. There are inevitable lapses, though. Charlie is, wisely, more of a watcher than a doer and considers very carefully what activities he’s going to take part in. He clearly believes a supervisory role is more fitting for a dog of his standing and experience when it comes to most jobs around the house and garden. Circé, on the other hand, loves to muck in and get involved, especially when it comes to re-distributing the tools when I’m gardening!

Charlie, for his part, is getting into the swing of how things work at number 26. He’s acquired Circé’s taste for apples and melon and takes part in the dishwasher-loading ritual which involves looking out for interesting things to lick as the dirty plates and pans go in. However, I’m convinced he’s doing this to be polite, as if it’s the done thing round here and he doesn’t want to upset his hosts, rather than because he really thinks it’s a good idea. The expression on his face is as if he’s wearing the hat from his Christmas cracker under sufferance because he’s with people who do that sort of thing but it’s certainly not something he’d choose to do.

Of course having Charlie around has also shown us how lovely it is to have two dogs rather than one, as if we were in any doubt. As Viv’s daughter Rachel says, when Circé misses Charlie when he goes back to Wales at the end of July, there’s only one option. But with everything else going on, she may just have to wait a while.

It’s been a long time…..

It’s been, as the song (almost) goes, a long time since I’ve done any blog writing, not because there’s been nothing going on (if only!) or because I’ve been too busy. To be honest I’ve struggled to know how to set down on these electronic pages what’s been going on since the beginning of the year.

But there are so many happy things to write about that I must get over this hurdle, so here goes……..

A week after my Dad had a bout of pneumonia which put him in hospital for a few days in January, Jonathan’s Mum, Pat (pictured here with Circé last Autumn), who’s a very fit 74, was knocked over as she was crossing the road on the way home from a shopping trip. The car which hit her was driven by a 93-year-old who subsequently failed the police eyesight test. She had multiple and very severe injuries, including two broken legs, 10 broken ribs, a cracked vertebra and severe internal injuries. A nasty knock on her head was also very worrying. She was airlifted to the Royal London hospital (did you see ‘Casualty 1907?) where, frankly, the trauma team saved her life.

Three and a half months later, she’s still in hospital, thankfully a bit closer to their home in Farnham than the Royal London, and is making good progress. Nevertheless it’s a long haul and we’re still not sure when she’ll be home or when she’ll be walking again. Perhaps the most upsetting thing is that she’d worked really hard to get fit and mobile after her second hip replacement last June and was just starting to enjoy swimming, gardening and country walks again when she was knocked down; it wasn’t just a huge physical knock she suffered.

Needless to say this has had unimaginable ramifications for the whole family. Luckily we’ve found a fantastic live-in helper for Jonathan’s Dad, Dennis, while Pat’s in hospital as managing at home alone for such a long period of time would have been very hard for him. Jonathan’s sister, Alison, who lives in London, has inevitably shouldered much of the responsibility for overseeing Pat’s care and making sure Dennis is OK. Jonathan has spent quite a bit of time in away from home since the beginning of February but we’ve been apart more than we would have been if the UK authorities didn’t take such stringent precautions against rabies. This will be easier at the beginning of June, six months after Circe’s rabies jab, when she’ll be able to visit the UK for the first time.

As if this wasn’t enough, my Dad, who’s been increasingly frustrated by his state of health for several months now, was taken ill while on holiday with us in France. Although spending a couple of weeks in hospital is not the way anyone would choose to spend the second half of their holiday he learnt quite a few French words and I think he chatted up the nurses a bit, too. Since he came out of the French hospital I’ve spent a bit of time helping him settle back into life at his home and to be with him for his most recent hospital appointment.

So, that’s where we are. Whichever devil prevented me from writing about all the other things which have been going on is now expunged. Now I can tell you about the good things: planning the vegetable plot, enjoying Circé growing up, finalising the plans for the house and barns and last but not least the arrival of Circé’s first doggy house guest later today.

Fip’in Fabulous

So much for my new year’s resolution for more frequent blogwriting. January went by in a blur not the least because it included an unplanned week in England to help my Dad, who’s not been well.

As I said in our end of year roundup, we’re pretty well integrated into French life, or at least village life in this very rural corner, but we’ve completely failed to change our music listening habits. Or at least up to now.

If you know us well you’ll know that we’ve both got quite catholic (with a small ‘c’) tastes in music; one of our first conversations when we met was about Led Zeppelin and the last well-known band we saw live was Faithless, so that gives you a bit of a clue. Increasingly, we listen to music online – Jonathan’s aptitude for technology means he can make internet music miraculously come out of the hi-fi – and we’ve been listening to last.fm since the days when they told you how many other people were listening (and it was often less than a hundred or so). When we’re not listening to Radio 4 (as a former government communicator I can’t quite kick the ‘Today’ habit) or Radio 7 (I love drama when I’m ironing) we enjoy Paatan’s musical rickshaw on the BBC Asian network and Judge Jules and Pete Tong on Radio 1. I can’t bring myself to listen to Radio 2 although I know many people of my age do; I just can’t get the JY Prog and Terry Wogan out of my head, I’m afraid. It’s a bit like not being able to eat snails because I can’t banish the image of those eyes on stalks.

Our musical shift France-wards came about through the Guardian’s “Readers Recommend” column and blog. I’ve been a fan for some time, and if you’ve ever made lists of songs with a connected theme then you’ll love it too. There used to be a great, but small, independent record shop in Guildford which played the same game – I can remember spending a very happy wet lunchtime there about fifteen years ago when the staff played whatever songs the customers suggested about rain. Forget about work with The Rain Song – what bliss! Sadly, it went the way of many independent record (and book shops) when HMV opened in the Friary Centre. So much for progress!

While my general music knowledge is reasonably broad, my brain is no good at detail so I struggle to make the connections between the theme of the week and the music I know and love. If often trawl up lots of irrelevances and miss the bloomin’ obvious amongst my favourites. I hesitate to suggest things which have already been mentioned because it just makes more work for the long-suffering editor. So although I often feel like the little girl standing on the edge of the playground watching admiringly, I love the column and with a growing band of regular contributors, RR makes every Friday a day spent people I feel I almost know and would like to know better.

RR comments are as diverse as the contributors and increasingly there’s been a feeling that something else was needed – a spin-off somewhere in cyberspace for tangential discussions about obscure lyrics, where playlists could be posted and recipes for boeuf bourgignon shared (I jest not). So, since last month, thanks to the heroic efforts of blimpy mcflah there’s the overspill blog. And it was through a comment in a thread about Deezer playlists that the Frogprincess introduced me to fip (and Deezer, come to that). Our lives will never be the same again.

Imagine a public service radio station with no adverts and very little talk that’s brave enough to follow the White Stripes with a Fauré sonata, with a repertoire encompassing Fred Astaire and Frank Zappa and everything in between. On its webpage Fip describes itself as ‘Curious and demanding’ and as if to prove the point while I’ve been writing this it’s introduced me to a French singer called Juliette singing a recent thing called “Tu ronfles” ("you snore"), Kassav (I’d guess at a North African background but with French accordion influences) as well as a Charlie Mingus piece that I’d imagine was recorded some time before I was born. I always thought that French contemporary music would be rooted as much in Africa and the middle east as in Northern Europe and fip has proved me right. There’s so much more than the bland sing-along-a-pop that you pick up when you fiddle with the radio as you get off the ferry at Calais.

Ironically, although we’re in France we can’t get fip on the radio. Evidently, since French regional public-service radio was re-organised a while ago fip ceased transmitting from Reims and we’re too far away from Paris to pick it up. But that’s no hardship thanks to their online radio player which is far more reliable than the BBC’s, even since it’s been beefed-up and re-named. Even better, fip gives a real-time playlist and archive. No wonder there’s a strong attachment to fip in Brighton!

Listen to a few of the tracks we've recently enjoyed on fip radio (using a Deezer playlist):