Eulogy For Dad

Dad was born in Altham near Accrington on 12th December 1938 – a cold day as he recalled. He was the third child – Auntie Margaret and Auntie Joan had preceded him and Auntie Ann followed two years later. Their home was Lane Side Farm, close to the main road between Clayton-le-Moors and Padiham and not really big enough for a family of six as well as Frank Jones, their live-in farm labourer, who arrived just before Dad was born and who only left twenty-one years later.

The Second World War started a year later. Dad remembered little about the War years, other than the Italian prisoners of war who were sent to work on the farm. They went ‘home’ each teatime and Dad only later found out that meant back to their camp in Oswaldtwistle.

Dad could recall Grandma doing an awful lot of cooking for the multitude who arrived at the farm every day. Grandad also had a land girl allocated to the farm who later brought along her boyfriend, so there were now 9 living at the farm.

Grandad had a mixed farm of poultry, dairy, pigs and arable which was compulsory during the war. Dad remembered there was always had food on the table, but the children were always expected to work.

Every day, Dad had milk to deliver round the village. In one of his famous stories (I’ll give you the shortened version) he told me:

It wasn’t like today, dropping off glass bottles of milk. It was a wooden cart pulled by our horse (a huge, black shire horse). The milk was stored in large churns on the back. At each house, people would leave jugs or bowls for us to measure their milk into. If they had forgotten to leave out their jug, then I’d run round the back, knock on the door and get their jug.

This one day, Mr Smith (name has been changed, not to protect the innocent but because I can’t remember the actual name) hadn’t left his jug out. I ran round to the back door and knocked. No answer. I let myself in, walked through the kitchen, got the jug from the pantry and went back to the cart. I left the milk back in the pantry.

That night, your Grandad asked me: “Jim, did you deliver to Mr Smith today?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“And did you leave the milk in the pantry?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Jim, he died last night. Did you not notice his body laid out on the kitchen table?”

Dad passed his eleven-plus exam went to Accrington Grammar in September 1949. A dedicated bus would pick him and his three sisters from outside the farm.

At the end of summer 1950, Grandad was offered a farm at Salmesbury between Blackburn and Preston, but continued to go to school in Accrington.

Greenhurst Farm was bigger than Altham and much more “grand”. Dad had to be involved in even more farm duties but the milk round disappeared. The farm modernised, getting rid of horses and replacing them with a tractor, so Dad had to learn to drive as soon possible. The farm gained a milking machine, so all the tedious hand milking became a thing of the past. But, most importantly of all, the family got a chainsaw so they could cut our own fuel. Anyone who ever came round to the house will know how much my Dad liked to chop up wood and making fires (he was still doing it only a few months ago).

He took his O-levels in 1954 and unable to decide what it was I wanted to do, carried on to take A-levels in the 6th form. Indeed, up until Covid, the pupils of Dad’s 6th form used to meet quite regularly. One, John Barlow, my godfather, is even here today.

Following 6th form, Dad was undecided as to whether he should work for Customs and Excise or be a pilot (Gradnma and Grandad were against that!). He eventually decided to work for the Ordnance Survey (OS) as a surveyor. Initially, he worked at Moundsey Road, Bamber Bridge before being sent to work at their Chessington, Surrey HQ. He did a course on computations and then did the work for real. He had never been away from home before (except on one family holiday) so it came as a bit of a shock to live in Surrey. He completed the course and moved into the computations branch and was reasonably happy.

Then, as all young men at that time did, he got the call to do his National Service. He passed the medical and was asked which was his preferred regiment. The OS instructed that he should do surveyor training with the Royal Engineers. Initial training was at Malvern and then the School of Military Survey near Newbury. Training completed, he collected his kit for posting to the tropics.

Dad and I shared an interest in military history. For his birthday, it was always difficult to buy him anything. So I started taking him for days out to military places of interest.

On one trip, we found ourselves at the Imperial War Museum’s aircraft museum at Duxford, near Cambridge. As pointed out earlier, Dad had wanted to be a pilot, so it was the perfect place to be: the sort of place where there are full-sized Harrier jump-jets suspended from the ceiling by wires, like over-sized Airfix kits.

We were walking through the civilian plane hall, past a prototype Concorde and a row of DC10s when a question occurred to me.

“Dad, when was the first time you flew in an aeroplane?”

“Well,” he began, “when I did my National Service, we set off from Southampton in a troop ship. Once we’d passed through the Suez Canal, we…”

“Wait a minute! You’ve been through the Suez Canal on a ship. How come you never said?”

“Well, you never asked. Anyway, when we got to Singapore, I was given a rifle (but no bullets) and put on a train north. There was a border dispute between Malaysia and Thailand and soldiers were being killed as they were continually being caught on the wrong side of the border. The only thing is, no-one had ever mapped exactly where the border was. So each day, we were flown by helicopter and dropped off at the top of a mountain. We’d construct a trig point, take all the measurements we needed, then get back out again before anyone realised we were there and took a pot-shot at us. So I suppose that was the first time I ever flew.”

The blurry photos of helicopters in Dad’s National Service photo albums now made a lot more sense.

“After that, we got a ship to Kuching and then another to Brunei.”

My Dad spent the majority of his National Service mapping Sarawak, an area of north west Borneo which was then mainly virgin rainforest.

“By that stage there were only two of us left and we were told to report to the airfield. I took one look at the aeroplane and I didn’t like it. It was tiny, with just three seats. I took one look at the pilot and I didn’t like him. He stank of whiskey. We asked where we should put our kit bags and were told to put them in the tiny space behind our seats. And the pilot seemed to be in a hurry to get there, so he could get back again before it went dark. So we got in, buckled up and set off. As it was a small plane, we were soon at cruising height, flying just a few feet above the forest canopy. There were just trees, as far as you could see, in every direction. That was the first time I ever flew in a plane.”

“So how come you’ve never told me this before?” I asked.

“Well, you never asked.”

Dad was based in three different places during his time in Borneo: Penampang, Kasigui and Brunei Town, but these were just bases for field operations. He said it was hard work: clearing trees and building trig points but the rewards in stunning views, staying in villages and long houses, hiring guides and porters and seeing new, unusual things were great. Dad handed his gun to the locals, who used it to shoot game for their meals. He spent his twenty first birthday spent on top of Mount Mulu in what is now Gunung Mulu National Park.

On his return to the UK and the Ordnance Survey, Dad worked for about 8 years all over the country, mapping all kinds of areas: the wilds of Scotland in the summer (which suited his love of the outdoors and walking) and England during the winter.

Luckily for us, one Bank Holiday weekend, Dad was asked by a colleague, knowing he was driving North from Surrey, if he could have a lift. He had a date with a girl he'd met from Southport. Dad agreed and said he’d drop him off in Southport itself, as it wasn’t that much out of his way. Dad’s friend organised for his date to bring along a friend and that is how Dad met our Mum. Love blossomed and they eventually married, setting up home in Eccleston in 1967. Eccleston was chosen as a half way point between Salmesbury and Southport and it was also where my Auntie Margaret taught at St Mary’s Primary school.

Children quickly followed: first Alistair, followed swiftly by Iain, then myself and finally, the long desired girl, Kirsten.

Dad settled to working nearer to home in the North West and committed himself fully to family life: supporting Mum with all the household chores and taming a large overgrown garden. He ferried the kids all over the place for numerous sports, scouts, horse riding and myriad other clubs: basically raising a large and boisterous family (though I, of course, am the quiet one).

Dad still enjoyed his weekend walks and nights in the Robin Hood or the Farmers Arms and eventually he retired at 60, although still did bits of work such as driving or helping out Iain and anyone else who asked.

In particular, he spent more and more time looking after the cricket field which he found really rewarding. He eventually became the Groundsman alongside such luminaries as Brian Wane, Harry Norris, Geoff Marsden and Alan Richardson.

Dad and Mum also took the chance to travel. Dad in particular loved visiting his sister Margaret and all the family and friends they have made in Australia. Travel was something he really enjoyed. I remember introducing them to my Year 4 class as a pair of globetrotting travellers that I realised how many countries they’d been to. When my Mum said, “When we were in Tahiti…” and I thought, ‘Oh yeah, forgot about that one’. On one trip, he managed to return to Borneo with Mum and, as one of the few foreigners to visit during the 1950s, was treated as a Very Honoured Guest.

My Dad loved seeing his kids grow up and enjoyed the arrival of grandchildren, who he doted on. He and Mum have become deeply rooted in Eccleston and hence his desire to be buried here, when he had the option to be buried in the family vault up in Oswaldtwistle. He particularly loved all the friends he made in this area and hopefully he sometimes told you all that, though knowing Dad, probably not.

We all have memories which epitomise our Dad. I’ve already shared mine. Please share yours in the comments section below.