They told me you were dead

Years ago I edited a village magazine; wrote a book for my grandson; more recently kept a regular blog, painted portraits and landscapes; played golf with my friend John Wilkes which I still do when I am fit, although there are golfers who would not call riding the course on a buggy for nine holes 'golf', but we enjoy it.







Here is the last painting. I don't know who he is, I just saw him at the seaside; the lady I painted him for said he was Thomas, but she made that up.


I received a Christmas card from a lady who wrote she enjoyed my blog. So, for her and anybody else who is interested here is a true story I wrote some time ago.

It is entitled:


 "They told me you were dead".



The directions to his house were clear.

“Go down the hill, up the next, sharp left at the stone cottage with the new ‘Dead End’ sign on the corner”.  

I thought the sign a bit insensitive of his friends on the council when he had just suffered his second heart attack.

His first was on the golf course. We found him lying alone at the side of the sixteenth fairway in the semi-rough; a fair description of him at the time.

“Where are the others?” we asked.

“One’s gone to get the car - the other two played on as there was no point in them staying here”.

I thought we were going to have the one where they were carrying him back but kept putting him down while they played their shots!

               

Keeping him company until transport arrived I thought of asking if he had made mention of his golf clubs in his will, but decided against it as they were almost in a worse state than he was.

Back in the clubhouse he was plied with a couple of large brandies, which the doctor seemed to think was the wrong treatment for a heart attack. In hospital, admonished over the brandies, he spent considerable effort trying to get out because, as he complained, “they are all bloody old in here”. He was 82!

The second time, by good fortune, he was playing with a medical man, Harry Tough pronounced Touckkk, who had him straight into hospital with no brandy.

Harry on one occasion, feeling sorry for my golf, gave me a prescription written on my scorecard: ‘add two strokes to handicap’!

                               

Peter served in Burma during the 1939 –1945 war. It was rumoured he offered to surrender to the Japanese in return for a more favourable golf handicap.  It came to naught because unless you know a compliant golf club secretary, fixing handicaps is not something undertaken lightly. At the time the Japanese could hardly be described as compliant.

“Ah So” exclaimed the Japanese officer at their meeting

“If that’s your attitude”, replied Peter,  probably misunderstanding the pronunciation,

 “a******s to you mate, you can keep your handicaps - we’ll just carry on fighting”. 

Which by and large is how we came to win the war.

Always direct, if we didn’t meet up for a couple of weeks his greeting was to the point:

“Hello! They told me you were dead!”

Now he is dead – a third heart attack on the steps of the oldest used church in England at Brixworth in Northamptonshire.  He was attending a remembrance service for his Burma Star colleagues.

He remains a part of that noble England we once knew because, for better or worse, he helped keep it for us, although when you read newspapers these days, you might wonder if Peter knew what he was at and would have been better advised to surrender?

I have a ‘divi’ number now. It came about partly as a consequence of recounting the circumstances of the death of Peter Fletcher which brought into focus a conversation I held with my grandson Jack who, for a brief while when he was eight years old, took a great interest reading the gravestones in the village churchyard. I think he was intrigued by the great variation in ages at which people had given up the ghost.

“When are you going to die Grandad?”

“Not yet I hope Jack. Why do you ask?”

“Because you are quite old Grandad”

I recalled with shock how very old my grandfather appeared to me when I was eight years old. Perhaps Peter Fletcher wasn’t far off the mark!

When I was eight and obliged to go out with my Mum, we shopped at the Co-op because the ‘divi’ was an essential part of income for hard-pressed families. She had a personal ‘dividend’ number by which means she shared in the profits relative to her expenditure.  A very small share I think.

Our Co-op  shop in the High Street in Aylesbury had great counters stretching to infinity, or so it seemed, connected to a central cashier’s office on high like the cab on a crane to where small wooden containers, hand polished by use over the years and containing the customers’ payments were catapulted on zinging wires and returned with any change and a receipt. One of my life’s ambitions, unrealised like a single-figure golf handicap, was being permitted to pull the handle that sent the boxes hurtling like rockets to the cashier.

My Mum would have been quite amazed that I remembered going shopping with her over 80 years ago and remembering the magic Co-op words  “the divi”!

               

Now, I have a ‘divi’ number. Bought a funeral plan and have already received and spent my ‘divi’.

Survivors have only to ring the Co-op and all will proceed in orderly fashion with the funeral costs already met.

What’s more, whenever I get to where golfers go, I am sure there will be Peter with:

“Hello! They told me you were dead”.

This time he will be right.