grabbed Flo by the hand.
“Flo, I’m not coming back. I love you, Flo and I’ll miss working with you, but we’ll still be mates. We’ll always be mates. If I find a great new job, maybe they’ll take you on too, Flo.”
“No, they won’t, Zara! You won’t get a great new job and even if you do, hun, they won’t take me on.”
“Don’t be so silly, think positive, Flo! Something good will happen to both of us. Anyway, you best get back to Penny Pinchers. Tell that creep I’m delighted to be away from him! I’m off to buy a couple of local papers. I’m going to get applying for new jobs straight away. This is all going to work out brilliantly, Flo, just you watch!”
Part Four
Searching For Justice
SIMON – September 1986
Grief is impossible to accurately put down in words. I don’t believe there is a natural pattern for grief. I don’t believe grief passes in stages, it just comes and goes like a dark cloud, sometimes gathering in clusters and sometimes just passing over for an instant to ruin a sunny day.
From the moment we were notified of Colin’s death, to the end of his funeral, two weeks later, I felt I had coped with his death reasonably well and then all of a sudden I wasn’t coping at all. I started to struggle to sleep at night, getting my brain to settle down was an impossibility as it kept reminding me of its own mortality and that it had lost it’s closest comparable. Colin’s death hindered the deception that I would live forever.
Colin’s funeral was a long, long time ago now but when I think of the funeral, I always think of my Uncle Bob. I could count on one hand how many times I have ever met my Uncle Bob. He is my Mum’s brother, but they were and are, two very different character s. Mum is candid and expressive. Uncle Bob is serious, reclusive and complex. Before he retired, Uncle Bob was a neurosurgeon which added to what Mum and Dad always called his ‘God complex’. Naturally, as Mum’s only brother, he attended Colin’s funeral.
I wasn’t one of the sobbing masses at the funeral. My expressions of sorrow tended to be private affairs, but I remember the general atmosphere improved at the reception afterwards and polite laughter and chatter started to gather. I did not fancy being paraded amongst distant relatives as the surviving brother, so I was minding my own business, keeping a comfortable distance from Mum and Dad. When Uncle Bob sauntered over, I was by the buffet tables, trying to spot which of the white bread sandwiches had egg and cress in. I had met Uncle Bob a couple of times before, he had called in one Friday evening the previous summer when he was on his way to go rambling in the Lake District, so I was well aware of who he was. He was a tall, Italian looking man with a well groomed black moustache, thick rimmed spectacles, a full head of waxed, dark hair and an expensive suit. I guessed it was expensive anyway, Mum and Dad always said that given he was a neurosurgeon with no children, he must be loaded. I also remember in a sea of thin ties, Uncle Bob’s was the thinnest.
“How are you bearing up, Simon?” he asked sympathetically.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
I was a shy kid with adults. I was twenty one before I could hold a proper conversation with any adult other than Mum and Dad. I had given him the standard answer that I had given to every adult friend and relative concerned about my well being. At that stage, I was relatively fine.
“Now, can I offer you some advice?”
“Sure.”
Advice from a neurosurgeon, I expected, would be about working hard at school or studying sciences or some other crap I wasn’t really interested in, but if Uncle Bob was prepared to give me some advice, I was, at the very least, going to pretend to listen.
“Your Mum and Dad tell me that you and Colin were very close, is that right?”
“Yes.”
This was already not going along predicted lines.
“Well, what I am about to say, will probably sound
“Flo, I’m not coming back. I love you, Flo and I’ll miss working with you, but we’ll still be mates. We’ll always be mates. If I find a great new job, maybe they’ll take you on too, Flo.”
“No, they won’t, Zara! You won’t get a great new job and even if you do, hun, they won’t take me on.”
“Don’t be so silly, think positive, Flo! Something good will happen to both of us. Anyway, you best get back to Penny Pinchers. Tell that creep I’m delighted to be away from him! I’m off to buy a couple of local papers. I’m going to get applying for new jobs straight away. This is all going to work out brilliantly, Flo, just you watch!”
Part Four
Searching For Justice
SIMON – September 1986
Grief is impossible to accurately put down in words. I don’t believe there is a natural pattern for grief. I don’t believe grief passes in stages, it just comes and goes like a dark cloud, sometimes gathering in clusters and sometimes just passing over for an instant to ruin a sunny day.
From the moment we were notified of Colin’s death, to the end of his funeral, two weeks later, I felt I had coped with his death reasonably well and then all of a sudden I wasn’t coping at all. I started to struggle to sleep at night, getting my brain to settle down was an impossibility as it kept reminding me of its own mortality and that it had lost it’s closest comparable. Colin’s death hindered the deception that I would live forever.
Colin’s funeral was a long, long time ago now but when I think of the funeral, I always think of my Uncle Bob. I could count on one hand how many times I have ever met my Uncle Bob. He is my Mum’s brother, but they were and are, two very different character s. Mum is candid and expressive. Uncle Bob is serious, reclusive and complex. Before he retired, Uncle Bob was a neurosurgeon which added to what Mum and Dad always called his ‘God complex’. Naturally, as Mum’s only brother, he attended Colin’s funeral.
I wasn’t one of the sobbing masses at the funeral. My expressions of sorrow tended to be private affairs, but I remember the general atmosphere improved at the reception afterwards and polite laughter and chatter started to gather. I did not fancy being paraded amongst distant relatives as the surviving brother, so I was minding my own business, keeping a comfortable distance from Mum and Dad. When Uncle Bob sauntered over, I was by the buffet tables, trying to spot which of the white bread sandwiches had egg and cress in. I had met Uncle Bob a couple of times before, he had called in one Friday evening the previous summer when he was on his way to go rambling in the Lake District, so I was well aware of who he was. He was a tall, Italian looking man with a well groomed black moustache, thick rimmed spectacles, a full head of waxed, dark hair and an expensive suit. I guessed it was expensive anyway, Mum and Dad always said that given he was a neurosurgeon with no children, he must be loaded. I also remember in a sea of thin ties, Uncle Bob’s was the thinnest.
“How are you bearing up, Simon?” he asked sympathetically.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
I was a shy kid with adults. I was twenty one before I could hold a proper conversation with any adult other than Mum and Dad. I had given him the standard answer that I had given to every adult friend and relative concerned about my well being. At that stage, I was relatively fine.
“Now, can I offer you some advice?”
“Sure.”
Advice from a neurosurgeon, I expected, would be about working hard at school or studying sciences or some other crap I wasn’t really interested in, but if Uncle Bob was prepared to give me some advice, I was, at the very least, going to pretend to listen.
“Your Mum and Dad tell me that you and Colin were very close, is that right?”
“Yes.”
This was already not going along predicted lines.
“Well, what I am about to say, will probably sound
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