Freddie

Dear Peeps, still in agony after the tooth extraction, so hear is one from the vault .

I got an obscure question correct in a pub quiz once, pure fluke of course, I am not pub quiz material, it may have been one of my shining moments (like the time I knew what AD stood for in Religious Education, no one else in the class knew, but I had seen it on the TV the night before and asked my dad and as luck would have it, it was the question of the day and I was the girl with the answer! It doesn’t get much better than that, shocking my teacher as well as several classmates who had me down as a halfwit) so back to the question I got right in the pub quiz

Question: what was a number one hit for 5 weeks leading up to Christmas 1979 and New year 1980?,

Answer: One day at a time, by Lena Martell

The reason I knew the answer to this question that seemed to stump everyone else? Read on …..

Between Christmas and new year of 1979 I went shopping in reddish and bumped into Freddie, me and my mum were loaded with bags like a couple of packhorses and Freddie had a box of readybrek and a pint of milk, he said it was his weekly shop, and it probably was, he didn’t waste much time eating (but liked a pint or two especially if they were being bought for him *) my mum said that wont be enough Freddie and he said “I’m like Lena Martell I am, one day at a time”, we laughed and said goodbye, and it stuck in my memory forever after.

At that time he was divorced from his wife, at different times during the boys teenage years, when they had fallen out with mum and staying with dad seemed an easier prospect (I say seemed because, yes they could have all the freedom they wanted, no one quizzed them about their comings or goings, Freddie never laid down the law in any way whatsoever and this must have seemed very much what they thought they wanted, but neither did he ensure there was food in the cupboards or the bills were paid, in many ways he never grew more responsible than a teenager, and the boys came to their senses and soon returned to mum gladly even welcoming the house rules, roast dinners and curfews, it was a small price to pay for being looked after, there was order, with Freddie there was chaos) he was damn good company and because of this he was never short of a pint, who wouldn’t want his company he had a good sense of humour and was great company.

Freddie died last week, he had been in St Anne’s Hospice, which was very nice by all accounts but he wanted to go home, back to his flat near his local, the armoury on Edgeley, not that he had been well enough to prop up the bar there in a long time. He came home and was looked after for the last few days of his life by his three sons.

He would have been 80 years old three days later, but he never made it that far. He spoke to my mum, he said he had had a good innings and it was time.

The funeral was just two days after he died, I presume it had been sorted out whilst he was ill and he would have been ok with as little fuss as possible.

My mother went to the funeral, after all she had known him since he was in his twenties, two very funny stories were told at the funeral and though I had heard them plenty before they still make me smile.

One of his sons said he had moved in with him in because he craved some freedom, he got that all right along with the electricity being cut off and an empty fridge, he remembers on their way home one night they “borrowed” some lights from a roadwork’s, and they used them in the living room that evening so they could see the fish and chips they were eating from the paper, they were deep in conversation and every 4 seconds the room would light up.

One of my mums tails is of when her and my dad were first “courting” and he said to my mum when my dad left the room, “if you give me half a crown I will go out and leave you and john on your own”, my mum said “half a crown, you can sit there all night for all I care you wont ever get a penny from me”, she certainly beat him at his own game, because after huffing and puffing for 10 more minutes he went out anyway.

The obituary in the Manchester Evening News paper said “ he still had his dry wit right to the end” and even though I wasn’t present I know for sure its true, I suspect he may have looking back to his catholic upbringing and that myth of an after life who would he want to meet? No one in particular but he would be hoping for a warm welcome from the bar maid and a complimentary pint……

God Bless Freddie X