This morning as Meg was being cared for by a couple of older, female workers (they even go away on holiday with each other), we decided to use the new appliance that I have just bought to wash Meg’s hair whilst she was flat on the board. This is an inflatable type of bowl with a drain hole in the bottom and a type of channel in which the patient’s neck rests. The carers had seen something similar before that so made fairly light work of the task which was great – from now on, we may well incorporate this into a routine for Meg each Saturday morning. After we had breakfasted, we made our usual trip into town and met up our three regular friends with whom we generally have a good chat each Saturday morning. We had to inform them that we might not see them next Tuesday morning as I have a doctor’s appointment which is rather getting in the way of our regular meeting but there will be further occasions in the week. In fact, we were ten minutes late returning and half way up the hill received an urgent telephone call from the care agency to the effect ‘Where are you?’ Fortunately we were only a few minutes late and so did not disrupt their schedule too badly. As we lunched we listened to a beautiful rendition of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 (‘Elvira Madigan’ is the popular name, and we never tire of this particular work.)
As I was flicking through the pages of ‘The Times’ yesterday, I noticed that in one seaside town, Weston-Super-Mare, there is a movement to try to remove one of the enduring attractions of the seaside, namely the donkey rides. There are local campaigns both for and against the removal of the donkeys but it did put me mind on my own family holidays from the ages of about 6 to 11. Our holiday consisted of one day at the seaside which was always Scarborough some 60 miles distant from Harrogate. We always hunted around in a kitchen drawer for the front door key because we had the notion that when we were on holiday, even for one day, we needed to lock the front door which was normally left unlocked (this was the 1950’s where I do not think that people usually locked their front doors) Then my mother, sister and I caught the bus to Scarborough which was exciting enough in itself. Once we arrived in Scarborough we were met by ‘Uncle Jim’ who was not an actual friend but a life-long friend of my mothers. I learnt subsequently that ‘Uncle Jim’ had actually proposed to my mother who had evidently turned him down – had she accepted, I might not have existed or would be a very different person. To give him his full name, James Trotter was a High Anglican vicar and was much loved in his parish and community – as we walked down the street, he would be stopped every few yards by friends and acquaintances for a chat. Then we got ourselves onto the beach where my sister and I were treated to a stick of rock and some candy floss (which my mother hated) Then the absolute highlight of the day was the donkey rise which cost about 6d (2.5 pence) and where we were walked on the donkey for about a one hundred yard stretch and then back again. In the late afternoon we either went for a meal of fish and chips or went to the vicarage, where we served a high tea by Eve who was Uncle Jim’s present wife. She was always rather a cold and aloof figure and I now appreciate why. They also had the most enormous cat because it was fed on a diet of a huge slab of fish (which I surmise might have given him by a friendly parishioner) Then in about 1960, my mother received a letter from Uncle Jim with some devastating news. He had an operation for bowel cancer and we were told that they removed 80% of his intestines after which he did not survive very long. ‘Uncle Jim’ was a very significant part of our childhood and as he hailed from the NorthEast he always called us ‘hinny’ which is the local vernacular term of endearment amongst Geordies. I wondered whether any trace of his existence might be available on the internet as he had died in 1960. A search term of ‘James Trotter Anglican priest Scarborough’ revealed just one trace of his life which was a tombstone in a graveyard in Scarborough where he was buried. None of the family went to his funeral and I am not sure if we were invited. But the tombstone had an inscription upon it which was a biblical text ‘I thank my God upon every remembrance of you’ This is apparently a very well known text from an epistle of St Paul to the Philippians in Northern Greece. On a literal level, it refers to the feeling that ministers have towards their congregation when a new parish is started but on a more generic level, it refers to the fellow feeling which we are encouraged to have with our fellow men. I even found on the internet an hour long sermon preached by an evangelical American preacher who had taken these words as his opening text but knowing how loving and loved was my Uncle Jim, I am sure that these words were chosen by him before his death. I have a vague remembrance that my sister and her then boyfriend might have visited our Uncle Jim before his death but I need to check with her that my memories are correct on this point. In reflection, even though he died some 64 years ago now, all I can say that our Uncle Jim was a fixed point in our lives and he loved my sister and I as though we were his own children. He and his wife Eve did not have children of their own whether by choice or accident I can only conjecture. But the same letter which conveyed to us the news of his terminal illness also contained the news that Eve had promptly left him. Somewhere, and I must ask my niece about all of this, we might have a photograph lurking somewhere of our Uncle Jim but it would have been taken on a little Brownie 127 camera and the figures will be minute. I must confess I heard not thought about him now for years but the ‘donkey story’ triggered all of these childhood memories.
© Mike Hart [2024]