Tribute

I used to tease Mum about her Walsall accent. Most of the time you couldn’t actually detect it, but it was definitely there – when she was excited or anxious, or when she used certain words: kettle, arboretum, pikelets. She didn’t get annoyed. In fact, she never really got annoyed with me. Or at least if she did she hid it well.

I’ve been looking through a lot of old photographs with Alison and Dad. My favourite is one of Mum running at a sports day, aged 9. On the back, in her handwriting it says “I won this race”.

A couple of things struck me as I looked through the photographs. Firstly, that it was harder than I expected to find photographs in which Mum is the focus of attention. I think that Mum was generally more comfortable when she wasn’t the centre of attention.

The other thing that struck me as I looked through the photographs was how much of Mum’s life she spent doing things that she absolutely loved doing, and became expert at. There are photographs of her dancing, and teaching, and in her garden, and with her family. She did things that she really loved doing a lot, and I think that made her happy.

Mum was ill for a long time. She knew exactly what was happening, she was sometimes in pain, and towards the end she was definitely frustrated that her body wouldn’t allow her to do the things that she wanted to do. But she was determined to keep going.

So in December she came down to London for Stanley’s birthday, even though she probably wasn’t well enough to. She wanted a normal family Christmas, and she sat at the head of the table as usual with her family around her, and I know that she loved that. And she carried on dancing until it was no longer physically possible.

She didn’t really talk to me about dying. We always had something more interesting or urgent to talk about. But the last time I saw her she did tell me that I should look after Dad. Her actual words were “you should make sure Dad has enough cricket matches to go to” but I knew what she meant.

One of the things we were able to do with Mum in the last few years was to go on short holidays, mostly to places of her choosing. We never went for very long, and sometimes Mum would have to pause the holiday half way through to travel to London to get treatment at the Marsden. But she would come back the next day and just carry on.

One of the photographs I picked out is from one of those holidays. It shows Mum sat on a rock, on a beach, on Holy Isle, waiting for a boat to take her back to Arran. The sun is shining, and we’d just walked the length of the island and back. Mum is doing something that she loved doing, and she is happy. And that’s how I’m choosing to remember her.

Podcast list

Distraction Pieces

The Adam Buxton Podcast

The Comedian’s Comedian

Great Lives

Bulleit Originals

Seriously

Reply All

Song Exploder

The Beginning Farmer Show

99% Invisible

StartUp

Adam and Joe

Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast

WTF with Marc Maron

The Life Scientific

The Bugle

Serial

Sky Sports Cricket

5 live’s Football Daily

Test Match Special

Cricket Writer’s Podcast

World Cricket Show

Football Weekly

Colin Murray and Friends

5 live Sport Specials

The Ashes

The Ashes Podcast

This American Life

Digital Human

Worst Idea of All Time

Four Thought

The Nerdist

Radiolab

Steve Ovett

If we went on holiday during the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games, we would take our portable black and white television with us.

Dad would lift the bonnet of the car and connect the television to the car battery, threading the cable through the window of the caravan.

I would watch Kathy Cook and Alan Wells through crackly reception, and then recreate the action, recasting my matchbox cars as the athletes and myself as the commentator.

I remember Phil Brown overtake on the last leg of the 4x400m, and Daley Thompson snap his pole.

But mainly I remember the 1500m. Sebastian Coe or Steve Ovett changing gear on the home straight.

I wanted them both to win, slightly favouring Coe at the time, and growing to appreciate Ovett later. The 1984 Olympics were perfect.

Now, I reenact the home straight on pavements, supermarket aisles and escalators, changing gears and overtaking unknowing opponents, commentating under my breath in the style of David Coleman.

And I have a bias towards anything with thin red and blue hoops on a white background. At home we call this chair Steve Ovett:

999

I’ve only ever dialled 999 for 2 reasons: when my house was on fire, and for an ambulance for my son.

I don’t remember much about the gap between dialling 999 and the fire engines arriving. Despite the smoke and the flames I never felt the situation was out of control. I quite enjoyed the thrill of it.

But I remember everything about the 8 minutes it took the ambulance to arrive the first time I called 999 for my son. I felt no sense of control.

Stanley was less than a month old. He had a hole in his larynx, although I didn’t know that then. He was clearly unwell, struggling to eat and breathe, but I never actually thought his life was at risk.

Doctors had reassured us. One had said “he’s not going to just stop breathing”.

Then he stopped breathing.

I remember noticing the panic in my body. Cold sweat and my heart beating. But I remember a sense of calm, doomed certainty too.

As his breathing became more shallow, I had called Gavin to ask if he could drive us to the hospital, as he had done before. I made the second call moments later, as Stanley’s skin turned from pink to blue.

And then those long 8 minutes. Holding my still, lifeless baby, waiting for the paramedics to arrive with their nebulisers and their oxygen.