Don

I saw him in the distance, rangy and muscular under his blue plaid shirt and stonewashed jeans, his dark hair streaked with silver ruffling in the breeze, his eyes twinkling as only they could, a healthy glow to his skin. He returned my spreading grin and walked quickly towards me. We hugged the hug of old friends absent for far too long. I smelled the once-familiar scent of Embassy cigarettes on his breath and clothes.

'I suppose this means the cremation's off then?' I quipped.

'No, I've come to say goodbye Laura' he replied before seeming to vanish before my eyes.

I woke up, shocked that there was no escape from the news, even in my dreams, yet feeling oddly comforted at the same time.

Today I attended Don's funeral.

We should never have been an item. It was a fluke. A moment of weakness on my newly-dumped part. Young at heart as he was, Don was 19 years older for one thing, patently not the marrying kind, and wait for it, he had an ex-wife and five children to prove it.

But Don knew how to overcome all such misgivings. He knew how to make a girl laugh and feel good about herself, and perhaps even more importantly how to make a girl laugh at the world, and even herself and her silly habit of taking the world far too seriously. In short, he could make you forget yourself and actually notice the birdsong and the beauty of a sunset once more.

We met at the party of a friend-of-a-friend in Coventry where neither of us knew anyone and owing to a logjam in the kitchen we ended up sitting on the stairs together. I believe an invitation to the cinema ensued. I had no other invitations at the time so didn't turn him down.

Things progressed swiftly. His lovemaking was fast and furious but any customer service complaints were met with a roar of laughter. Here was a man totally secure in himself if somewhat selfish. We started meeting for the odd weekend on the Kent coast where he now lived, first in a rambling Victorian commune full of amiable middle-aged hippies near Ashford. Then eventually Don got himself a rented terraced house by the sea with no furniture in it and chatting on the stairs featured again. Every time I visited the sun seemed to be shining and we had lovely weekends walking around Dover, Folkestone and Hastings. I also accompanied Don on a couple of 'booze cruises' to France (popular at the time) to supplement his income as a recently-separated man and a memorable hovercraft trip to Calais (like being in a washing machine) where we sat on Calais beach eating warm bread, fresh tomatoes and camembert before the trip home again. We traipsed around various museums and had a highly amusing afternoon one frosty February when we came upon a group of male nudists perilously frying sausages on our descent to a secluded beach.

We enjoyed many trips in Don's £800 gold Renault car (an auction gamble) and he took me to all the local pubs and to see various down-on-their luck friends of his with whom he traded booze and cigarettes. In car boot sales and second hand shops he was ever on the hunt for overlooked Ming vases or books telling him how to spot an overlooked Ming vase (his get rich quick plan). His car was awash with language tapes (he was always trying to learn a new language) and the inevitable overflowing ash tray. I still cherish the white summer canvas bag he bought me one afternoon in old Hastings.

I always knew it wouldn't last between us and often wondered what he saw in a non-smoking, vegetarian, teetotaller with bad skin and that twentysomething judgmentalism that made me somewhat appalled that he could leave a wife and five children, though apparently she had thrown him out, having discovered a sizeable Sainsburys receipt in his pocket with another woman's shopping on it! As per life's great ironies, the young woman concerned had gone on to have three different children with three different fathers without ever once sleeping with Don. And he had it bad where *Mary was concerned. She was one of the few who had really gotten under his skin. Though according to his friends and relations this was far from the only instance of bad-boydom on his part.

I certainly didn't kid myself that I was his one and only and for the first time in my life that was fine with me. In fact I expected half the chapel to be full of weeping women with brightly coloured handkerchiefs, but actually it was just me and a pretty blonde solicitor and former colleague he had once cheered up by whisking her to Paris upon learning of her recent divorce trauma. Another friendship he had kept up as she turned out to be the last one to visit him in hospital before his unexpected death. No sign then of the mysterious French millionairess he regularly visited on Eurostar who begged him to decamp to France to live with her full-time. He described this woman as 'my soulmate' but said he could never accept her offer and become a kept man. In addition he was devoted to his five children in England whom he saw and took on holidays regularly, not to mention his octogenarian mum.

I surveyed those five children today on the sun-dappled lawn - three strapping twentysomething lads in their funeral suits, the youngest looking startlingly like Don, though they all share his mischievous ready smile, his two girls tall and elegant, one dark and one (the one expecting the first grandchild he will never see) fair. Their mother sits next to them with the elegance and grace of a woman who has long forgiven the past and is just grateful to have five happy, healthy young adults before her. A job well done. On the patio Don's mother (now 93, but elegant as a dowager and sharp as a pin) flicks through photo albums exclaiming more than once 'What did the silly bugger have to go and die for?' She's right. No mother should have to bury their child and that thought brought a frog-sized lump to my throat at the start of the service as she hobbled in, almost as large as the one I had when the curtains closed around the coffin at the end. Nearby the daughter who hasn't seen her for seventeen years tries to lurk in the shadows fearing the flick of her mother's critical tongue, the reason she left home at 14 and dodges attempts at family photographs. Even in death, she has her doubts she can ever compete with 'golden boy' Don. She is flanked by her two engaging thirtysomething daughters who annoyingly have no such problem with their indomitable nan and happily laugh along with her through the lens of generational distance. I talk to Don's mum's 'toyboy' the eightysomething *Jack, a fixture of the family for years, yet seemingly still a fish out of water in terms of the family dynamics.

The whole family together, evidently for the first time in years. Don would have loved this sunny afternoon laden with drinks and buffet sandwiches in his honour. What a shame it has taken his death to bring it about.

Apart from being annoyed by her second class treatment growing up (illustrated by how few photographs of her there seem to be in the family albums), Don's sister *Anita feels Don was slightly unhinged by his insistence on attending an approved city boarding school many miles from Coventry after their father walked out, now known for its high throughput of depressives, alcoholics and devil-may-cares. On the other hand it probably propelled him into further education and the eventual degree that hatched the first solicitor in their working class district. I remember Don was always terribly proud of having bettered himself against the odds (single mum in a council house in the 1950s/60s), though curiously went out of his way to socialise in working class pubs with out of work fishermen and ferrymen, often preferring this to the company of the chattering classes he had been so eager to aspire to.

But then Don's strong social conscience was always the most admirable thing about him, apart from his sense of humour. His career as a solicitor specialised in defending mostly hopeless cases, going where angels feared to tread, but someone had to do the unglamorous side of legal work in the name of British justice. In the last couple of years Don also rose to become leader of his local Labour party, despite or perhaps because of his cheap suits, campaigning for new work and opportunities for the deprived areas of Kent before having to step down owing to ill health. In a cruel twist of fate, he died not of the throat cancer he had contracted (and which he was making a good recovery from) but from a pulmonary embolism which formed in his leg and travelled up to his heart.

It was I who called time on our alliance. Having invited me to Lewes for Bonfire night and the weekend, I then didn't hear from Don until the next invitation, some weeks after said bonfire night, no reference to the previous. I told him firmly but politely. 'No. I'm not going to be messed about, even if it isn't terribly serious.' So that's where we left things, aside from the odd drink over the years, Christmas cards and Facebook contact. It was my most painless relationship, and more to the point, painless relationship break-up ever, and for that I thank him. I also thank Don for the courage he gave my younger and more unconfident self to just go out there, do things and enjoy life. Don loved life and I have learned to love life too. He was also not afraid to make trouble when circumstances dictated, though I am more moderate in that I try not to be the originator of any trouble in my life - just steel myself not to be afraid to finish it. Finally I thank Don for the lifetime's free legal advice he offered me as a parting gift. Sadly he being a criminal lawyer (and me not being a criminal), I never had cause to utilise this generous offer.

Moreover I never did collaborate on that autobiography Don threatened to write and asked me to help him with but I'm sure it would have made a rattling good read!

RIP o' restless Don and here's to you with a large lemonade! If you hadn't existed, someone would have had to invent you! Fond memories always. Lxx

Nanford Guest House - Britain's Worst Hotel used by Child Sex Ring

News that Nanford Guest House on Oxford's Iffley Road was a frequent venue for the 'Bullfinch' child sex ring, currently being sentenced, brought to mind that this same local guest house was also voted Britain's worst hotel by TripAdvisor in 2008, prompting various national journalists to book an overnight stay and write newspaper articles confirming how awful it was, one reporting that she had been awoken by what sounded like a body being dragged down the stairs at around 2am. She had wedged her door shut with an old fridge as the lock was dodgy and cowered under the covers for the remainder of the night.

Yet, if she truly suspected a body was being dragged down the stairs, why did she not phone the Police? It seems strange noises, dodgy characters, death traps and environmental health issues (including a resident's lounge smelling of urine) abounded back in 2008, yet no one apparently saw fit to call either the Police or the  local Environmental Health department to have the place investigated. Why not? What does it take before a supposedly intelligent  individual suspects that something very wrong is going on, possibly criminal? Not least a trained newshound ever in want of the next big scoop?

More than one Trip Advisor review advised 'Do not stay here alone' and not to stay at all unless you were desperate for accommodation.

The sex ring had been operating since 2004, four years before the Nanford won the accolade of Britain's Worst Hotel. There is more to this than meets the eye is my feeling about it.

Update 15/05/13: According to today's Oxford Mail, the emergency services tape of a rape being reported at the Nanford by a guest in the next room actually dates back to 2006, which potentially means the gang could have been caught seven years ago! Which begs the question, what have the Police been doing all this time? Did they really decide to bury their hands in the sand about investigating what was going on?

Death of a PM

I was most put out that Margaret Thatcher died the other week. As a friend pointed out; 'What are you going to do Laura? She was your only impression!' So, career over, I thought I would pen a poem. Not exactly a tribute but...

'You’ve Never Had It So Good’

The lady wasn’t for turning

Or helping other women off the sticky floor, through the glass ceiling

Thatcherism offered no sisterhood, ran no women’s support groups

Nor did she care for minors

Thatcher, thatcher, milk snatcher

Or miners

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out

Or trade unionists

Never mind strike, get on your bike.

As for your three day week, you’re making Britain weak

Don’t you see those other countries coming up the rear

Tooled up to the nines, shiny new factories in gear

To compete against us while you have another fag break

Foreigners can keep their lights on, bury their dead. Collect their rubbish.

Why can’t we?

Yes, crank out another rust bucket Friday Special at British Leyland

While making out you’re doing a favour for England

But you don’t fool Maggie

Determined to break your stranglehold on the economy

Like some sociopath to socialists.

She sold the working man his council house for a few bob, then closed down his pit job.

Using the Police as her own private security force to protect the scabs

Creating scabs that would never heal

And men ungrateful for longer lives of unclogged lungs

Who didn’t care for shiftlessness.

Then she hit you with the poll tax

And you bit back with a poleaxe

More frightening than the Falklands

And finally the lady was for turning.

She tore the heart out of coal and cars and ships and steel

But offered instead no Roosevelt New Deal

Just the inexorable rise of privatisation and its fees

Until forced to devise Corporate Responsibility

To infer they don’t rob customers without environmental reason

Successive governments changed little of what Thatcher put in place

Except to embrace the EU and open the immigration floodgates

The messing with our NHS and education go on

Until the day can dawn when all tax-funded services are gone.

Those who did well under Thatcher love her

Those whose communities she destroyed loathe her

She divided to rule and she loved opposition

She would never have agreed to a coalition

She would never have fiddled her expenses either

Yes, she had a few qualities as a leader

And her ism will live on long after she’s gone.

But her greatest legacy was surely as a figure of controversy

For love or hate, she provoked debate

With her ‘don’t care got nowhere’ mantra

And sober single-minded agenda

She was the enemy of political apathy

A woman who defied what a woman should be

She made people care about politics like few others did

As she opened a pandora’s box without a resealable lid.

©LS King 2013

Originally I looked up Margaret Thatcher quotes and intended to cobble a poem together using those, but things went in a completely different direction as they often do in writing. I did find some of the sayings unintentionally amusing though (Mrs Thatcher was known for having very little sense of humour and never getting jokes). Could that be one of the reasons she was so embarrassingly awful in her cameo on  'Yes Minister' which she insisted they write for her...?

• 'Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.'
• 'When I’m out of politics, I’m going to run a business. It’ll be called ‘Rent-a-Spine’
• ‘Politics used to be about trying to do something. Now it’s about trying to be someone.’
• 'We are a grandmother'
• 'I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.'
• 'You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it'
• 'I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air'
• 'There is no such thing as society, there are men and women and there are families.'
• 'To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.'
• 'What we think, we become. My father always said that... and I think I am fine.'
• 'Don’t follow the crowd. Let the crowd follow you.'

Brian Gunn-King 1933-2013

Since I have been so taken up lately with advising all the societies, workplaces and clubs my father was involved with of his recent death, I thought I would share a tribute on this blog. It is of course far from the full story of my father, but his death is naturally about him, not me. And for all his faults as a father and general eccentricities, he was at heart a well-meaning man who achieved much in his life. Something else quite surprising was the realisation of just how many remarkable men I had met in my childhood via my father's involvements - many of whom were friends of his - Richard St Barbe Baker (founder of an international organisation now responsible for the planting of some 23 trillion trees worldwide), Lord Dowding (commander of Bomber Command) Dr Gordon Latto (an eminent Reading physician credited with saving Sir Francis Chichester from cancer prior to his circumnavigation of the world, Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanu (Indian spiritual leader of the Jains, whose handshake was like an electric shock), Professsor Scott Nearing (a pioneer of self-sufficiency long before The Good Life was thought of) and Wilfred Capper (founder of the 560-mile Ulster Way to rival the famous Pennine Way in England). Then there were the videos my father featured in which we watched after the funeral and made him seem like a David Attenborough of architecture and conservation (completely different to how he was at home!) I will end with said tribute...

'It is with sadness I advise of the death of Brian Gunn-King on 18^th March 2013 in his eightieth year, following a long neurological illness, bravely borne. Brian became a vegetarian during his teens and devoted the rest of his life to spreading the word about vegetarianism, veganism and the environment.

Brian was primarily involved with the International Vegetarian Union of which he was for many years, Honorary General Secretary, helping to organise several international congresses and working closely with the then-President of the IVU, the late Dr Gordon Latto, winning the Mankar memorial award for services to vegetarianism (see photo) in 1977.

On a local level in his adopted Northern Ireland (he was born in Coventry), Brian and his Iyengar yoga teacher wife Margaret arranged many events and cookery demonstrations via the Vegetarian Society of Ulster of which Brian was for some years the president. Brian also served as the president for the Ulster Society for the Preservation of the Countryside working alongside the late founder Wilfred Capper who, inspired by the foundation of the 250-mile Pennine Way in England, founded his own  560-mile ‘Ulster Way’ in Northern Ireland, saving many areas of outstanding natural beauty across six counties from ruinous development.

In his professional life as a town and country planning chief, Brian also did much to protect and conserve both beautiful architecture and beautiful scenery, successfully advocating responsible landscaping and greater tree-planting in a number of new and rejuvenated areas. One village Brian worked on – Gracehill – won 15 environmental awards as a direct result of his input and Brian featured in a number of books, papers and documentaries on the environment and architecture of Northern Ireland. In addition Brian served as judge for Ulster’s ‘Best Kept Village’ competition for many years.

Brian was a lifelong member of Men of the Trees promoting the planting of millions of trees worldwide in addition to a number of architectural societies. When not campaigning for healthier lifestyles, animal welfare and the saving of heritage and the environment, Brian enjoyed veganic gardening, philately, photography, coin and postcard collecting, rambling, travelling and relaxing with his beloved cats in front of detective dramas.

An avowed atheist, Brian was buried in Northern Ireland following a humanist service, in accordance with his wishes. Regrettably no green cemetery was available in the area, though the family managed to source a handsome willow casket of which Brian would have thoroughly approved. Brian leaves a wife Margaret, and two daughters, Sita-Laura and Venetia.'

Horsegate (what would Mr Ed say?)

                                                                                          

Where’s the Beef?

A horse is a horse of course of course

Unless it’s a Findus Lasagne of course

It’s not always a steady course

Talk to those misled.

‘Meat is murder’ sang the Smiths

Meat is 29% according to Aldi

So should you feel 71% less guilty

Like that smug vegetarian?

Who can look Dobbin in the eye?

Enjoying the view from the moral high ground

As lesser mortals they decry?

Will you remain a demi-vegetarian by proxy,

Or are you game for something foxy?

When price drives demand roadkill

To keep down that weekly food bill

And Heston’s produced a tasty badger roulade

As an alternative to the remains of a knacker’s yard

With prickly hedgehog fool for dessert

Or will the deceit of your receipt

 Incite you to put your money where your mouth is

In favour of farm-fresh, free-range, organic, well-bred breast-fed, university-educated rare-breed animals

You’ve known since they were hatched and on first name terms

Paying the price for food to be what it says on the can

Reading between the labels, we should delete this food spam

Let’s send the kebab van packing and the burger too

Say no to hors for our h'ouevre

Demand the truth about marscapone

Drink milk from the UK not the Ukraine

And support British farmers and fishermen again. 

 ©LS King 2013

Suicide by Duress

A stroke recoverer friend in his 60s recently visited a new GP for the first time.

‘Have you ever considered suicide?’ she asked as she went through his notes.

‘No’, he replied.

‘Why not?’ she asked.

He was so thrown by her question (and having lost his ability to react spontaneously anyway through stroke damage) that he did not reply.

I suggested to him that he should complain to the surgery and get to the bottom of whether this was professional misconduct or she simply didn’t explain herself properly.

However he has so many battles to fight on a daily basis, he has to choose them carefully and is thinking of just requesting a different doctor in future.

It set me thinking about how not so long ago suicide was considered ‘a sin’ to the point that a suicide could not be buried in consecrated ground, yet somehow suicide has now become socially acceptable and even touted as ‘a human right’.

I particularly find it disturbing that this is bound to affect and influence those who might have challenging lives or health issues but who don’t necessarily want to die – they just want proper compassionate care and to be able to trust their health professionals to provide it.

To read that NHS hospitals got a ‘bonus’ for each patient they put onto the ‘Liverpool Care Pathway’ to bring their lives to an end (even if their lives were nowhere near their natural end) is frankly chilling. Some patients on the LCP have not even been old but cancer sufferers in their 40s and 50s and many it now transpires were being placed on the LCP without their consent or their next of kin’s consent.

Moreover, since when did food and fluids come to be termed ‘treatment’ to be withdrawn, rather than basic sustenance required as an essential human right?

What next? A posthumous award to Dr Harold Shipman for his humanitarian works? It seems to me there is little difference between what he was doing and what the Liverpool Care Pathway has been doing.

If we have an over-population problem, there must surely be better ways of solving it than manslaughter at worst and societal coercion for those who've served their economic purpose at best.

The Commerce of Sofas

A while ago I was helping my partner find a sofa for his new flat. We toured many furniture showrooms and warehouses finding the sofas either too large to fit the flat, too small, too garish, too nursing home-ish, not comfortable enough, too saggy, too expensive, too badly made (many seem to be held together with just staples these days), before I located a furniture emporium online which boasted it was the largest in the region and a proud family business since 1911. We duly trekked to the town in question to find to three capacious floors of furnishings with the upper floors in darkness. It turned out they only put the lights on when customers went upstairs as an ‘energy saving measure’. We toured each floor and whilst the furniture was somewhat unimaginatively displayed, we finally found a sofa which seemed to tick most of the boxes. ‘Can you deliver this by Christmas’? my partner asked. The shop assistant seemed doubtful even though Christmas was over six weeks away.  My partner then asked if he could buy the display sofa if there was not enough time to have one made. Again the shop assistant looked doubtful and summoned the boss, a lean worried looking man in his forties who bore the same surname as the business, presumably a descendent of the founder.

He seemed to have no straight answers to our questions about the sofa availability either, until finally (and reluctantly, it seemed to us), he agreed to sell the display model, even though we didn’t want the matching easy chair to go with it and that might be a problem from his point of view with fabric matching re a future consignment (which seemed odd to us as surely a sofa should come with two easy chairs and not just one to form a standard 3-piece suite)...? Just as it seemed a deal was about to be struck my partner requested Saturday delivery.  The boss stated this would not be possible as they had set delivery days according to when they had enough deliveries to travel to each area, but it was FREE delivery and a white glove service as they retained their own fleet of vans. My partner explained he was at work during the week and that I lived in a different city so could not take delivery either, and volunteered to pay for delivery if it could be on a Saturday morning when he was in.

Much to our amazement, the boss stated this would not be possible. We left the shop which evidently didn’t want to let go of its stock, despite our being virtually the only customers, and began the drive home. As luck would have it, we accidentally took a wrong turning out of the town and came across a huge furniture warehouse we had never heard of. We decided to stop. Lo and behold my partner found his ideal sofa on the sale floor at half price and with delivery to suit at an extra £50. Nothing was a problem for the friendly sales staff (sofa was delivered the following Saturday without incident) and they had a wonderfully eclectic range of furniture in all styles and to suit most budgets.

I reflected what a shame it was that some upstart furniture warehouse could so easily outrank a family business which had been running for over 100 years and wondered if the family ever set foot outside their own store to check out the competition. Much though the internet is playing a part in the sad demise of our High Streets, so are businesses which refuse to move with the times and operate as if still in their 1970s/80s heyday when every home possessed its own 24/7 housewife to receive furniture deliveries at the stores’ convenience, no matter that today’s footfall might tell a very different story to its glory days. In addition had the son ever had any business training/experience of the outside world, or had he just gone straight into the family business from school to continue running it the way it had always been run, his masterstrokes of innovation being the installation of eco light bulbs and the introduction of a website which was bound to disappoint in that it seemed far more impressive than the store and created false expectations.

Here was a business which was literally committing Hari Kiri by refusing to move with the times, or at least match up to its website, so how sorry should we feel for it?

In my last property job our Land Agent announced the demise of one of the quaint independent businesses in our premises across the road. I opined that it would be a sad loss. ‘Not really.’ He replied. ‘I wasn’t impressed with their business plan and frankly I wasn’t going to let them have it at all. In the end we compromised on a one year lease with an option to extend in the unlikely event they made a go of it.’

In an instant, I saw this business with its friendly, intellectual and earnest owner in a wholly new light. The leaseholder was in love with the idea of being a shopkeeper to his lovely shop, rather than someone who’d done their sums/market research and was in touch with it as a viable reality. I have since observed many hobbyist businesses which close all too soon after opening, much though some might succeed if they possessed more business acumen or more support from the banks.

But modern businesses once they have succeeded have no room for complacency. Last night at Halfords I spent the best part of five minutes waiting at a deserted till to pay for coolant, money in hand, despite half a dozen staff floating around and even fewer customers. My local Co-Op is similarly lackadaisical in its approach to customer service, frequently abandoning all tills to stock-take or shelf-fill, no matter that several customers might be waiting, and when they finally notice us, to inwardly tut as if customers were an unexpected inconvenience rather than their lifeblood.

As for my local B&Q, that replaced ALL of its manned tills with self-service tills taking DIY a step-ladder too far for most customers like me who fled.  It has now closed down leaving Oxford B&Q-less.

In the most successful pubs and businesses, it is noticeable that they do not stint on the staff or the customer service. Nor are they reluctant to sell or deliver the goods and even dare to chase up customer satisfaction levels afterwards. As for advertising, 'advertise or fossilise' as famous Victorian wit and whiskey distiller Thomas Dewer once said.