I had to have a little pause before taking it any further. The blog became a record of a pain filled time. The emotion expressed itself in different ways, writing about it being one of them. I would like to somehow 'finish it off' or more like round it off and tidy it up. I don't know where this will go now but there are a few things I would like to express and some stuff my father wrote down which it will be nice to register here.
I found a couple of notebooks belonging to my father. I was always asking him to write stuff down. Stories and things that I wouldn't remember or didn't know. It would have been great to have written down his story from start to finish and it was a plan I had but I couldn't get my head round sitting there and going through it with him knowing he was dying.
That said, he knew what was happening when he wrote down these bits and pieces so maybe it was just me that couldn't do it. That wouldn't surprise me.
Recollections of John Evans, my Father:
12.2.10
Steve's Birth
Steve was born very early in the morning. I was standing at a tram stop in West Derby Road on the way to work. I went across the road to a phone box to enquire and was given the news "mother and baby are well."
This happened after a long confinement. His mother (Dina) had a drip put onto her arm to help induce the birth and student doctors continually around her bed. This embarrassed and upset her quite a lot.
In those days the baby had to maintain its birth-weight before mother and child being released. At the end of the ward was a blackboard with the current weight of all the babies. On the way out after visiting I would check the weight and wave to Dina and give her the thumbs up meaning that the weight was OK! On several nights that wasn't true and so she was kept in a few days longer than 'norm'
All in all the period from going in hospital to having Steve and finally bringing him home was a very stressful time for Dina and she said she would not go through it again.
Me? I usually went for a pint with my dad when I got home from the hospital.
Steve's Homecoming:
I don't remember too much detail. I know we had to carry you all the way...you refused to walk!! As we were walking, different neighbours made a fuss of the baby. In these days there was always a few standing outside their houses.
I think we went straight to your Grans. Connection made!! From then onwards you became her new John. She would defend you against anybody... she did not believe you did anything wrong...Ring a bell? I went through the same when you were older living in Mere Bank, arguing with Harry the caretaker.
Meeting Dina:
First time I met Dina was at the Grafton Dance Hall. I got her up to dance late on in the night and asked to take her home and she agreed. We went out for a while, then one night at the Grafton we were dancing and Dina said we should split for a while, I think she had been to Scotland, anyway I was gutted. But two or three weeks later we met, again at the Grafton and decided to give it another go. Everything was great from then onwards. I took her home to meet my mum and dad. Her and my dad hit it off straight away. She used to love his stories. I would meet her to go to the pictures and often she would have twenty cigarettes that her father had sent for me. I eventually got her smoking.
Around this time I played darts a lot. I was in about 4 teams in different pubs and I was chosen to play for Liverpool in the city team. After we were married I had to cut back a lot on the darts.
When we were married I bought a bed in Sturlas (cheque shop, paying weekly to the Sturlas collector at your door) The first night after we had fixed the new bed up in the front bedroom (my mum and dad had let us have the front room) we went to bed,mum and dad still downstairs, felt a bit embarrassed going to bed. Anyway we got into bed and every time we moved the bed made loud noises. We had not taken the plastic covering off the mattress. The noise we made getting it off then must have been horrendous. god knows what your Gran and Grandad thought was going on. It was something to laugh about for a while after.
The Sturla collector I mentioned had collected off my Mum for years as I was growing up, his name was Mr. Worthington, always referred to as 'Worthie' He was originally a confectioner and he made the wedding cake when Dina and I married. [My thought: I remember Mr. Worthington well myself and he would bring me a selection box at Christmas time] Shortly after we moved in to my Mum and Dads we got a chance of the flat above Dr Murray (Sloanes Pub as it was originally) Dina and Elsie cleaned it up thoroughly before they let me see it. We moved in, furnished it with the help of Sturlas paying 'Worthie' weekly. your Grandad put up a tiled firegrate in the living room. It was the best house in the area. The only one with an 'inside' toilet POSH!!
A few years later the area was rehoused. We moved to 'Mere Bank' high rise flats. Lovely flat but 12th floor gave us some problems. We were there during the electricity cuts. You would get home and find lifts not working and hard to climb 24 flights of stairs in the dark. It was difficult to keep track of which floor you had reached.
Got my first car while we lived there. A Vauxhall [Me again: Vauxhall Victor, license number 122 EJJ] column change and bench seat. After about 6 years we bought our first house in Woodlands, Netherton. A bad move, Stephen got a beating coming home one night on the bus. We sold up and bought this house in Mossleyhill Road. That was a great move, living in an up-market area. I never knew this part of Liverpool existed.
Holidays:
First holiday was a caravan in Rhyl we rented it from Marjorie Blows. Stephen was about 2 years old and we took 'our Viv' for company. She was about 6 years old. We run out of money after 1 week of our 2 week holiday and struggled to eat well for the rest of the holiday. But we did and enjoyed it very much.
Our first holiday abroad was planned with Kenny Bell and Syd Downes. We always went for a drink on Wednesday night and that Syd and I would give Kenny 10 shillings each to save for a winter holiday to Majorca. While we were saving the price of the holiday went up and we increased the 10 bob a week to a £1. We went on holiday to a great holiday for 5 nights costing £30 a couple. The same hotel is still in the brochures now costing more than £650 a week. A brilliant holiday!!
The Scottish holidays came after that, I'm sure you can remember them better then me...[Me: In fact the Scottish holidays came much before that.]
That was all he jotted down of those so precious memories of me, him, my mother, my Granny and Grandad and my Auntie Elsie, Our Viv and family and friends. It was in the period after the cancer had first been diagnosed and before he went into hospital for the operation to try to remove it. At the time I thought, and he did too, that he was near the end of his life. My mother had died about 5 years before from lung cancer (remember the cigarette story earlier)
I was always so impressed by how he dealt with the situation in front of him, how utterly brave he was. He wrote those words down for me, so I would know what it was I wanted, it wasn't his idea but he wanted what I wanted and worried for me and apologised for hurting me by being ill.
I was so relieved that he came through the cancer operation and then being involved in his recovery that I never went back to the idea of recording these memories until recently. It had gone through my mind several times and we spent a lot of time together as he grew iller but it was a difficult thing to do. In the end he did write down a few more bits and pieces in a little notebook I took into the Edinburgh Hospital where they told us his cancer had returned.
These are they:
ME [John Evans]:
Born to William and Florence Evans
D.O.B. 13th August 1930
Address: Nesfield Street (off Walton Road, Liverpool)
Left above address 4 years later.
Moved to 47 Exley Street, Liverpool 6
A few months later started school at Butler Street
Headmaster: Mr Gibson
Favourite teacher Mr (Paddy) Andrews
Evacuated to Northop Hall to a nice bungalow (The Roberts) in the field behind
Mr/Mrs Roberts [ran seni?] village shop.
Got fed up and ran away.
Hitch hiked to Liverpool.
Police had been notified.
Mum and Dad worried sick.
My Dad was an air raid warden.
When the all clear siren sounded I used to go up from the underground shelter and collect shrapnel from the bombs and shells.
After the above there were just a few odd notes and finally a brief description of how he was feeling:
Booked visitor apartment for 2nd and 3rd March
'for the girls'
Steve took me to hospital to get my catheter changed today 1st March.
"Not very pleasant."
Jill and Kate now coming on March 30th.
Steve took me for a run in the car on Saturday. Enjoyed it very much, but it was very foggy all day.
It's Tuesday 27/3 I am going for a game of snooker with Dave.
The weather has been fantastic for a fortnight or more. We used to call this an "Indian summer"
Nurse from St. Columbas coming today for 1st meeting Weds. 28/3
Nurse name Marie Barry.
She calls twice a week.
Put me on Tramadon which made me 'sick' Took me off them and put me on Morphine. Still getting sick. Asked to go back on Paracetomol.
You left about 8pm. I had a tub of rice pudding at 8:15pm. By 8:30pm I felt sick and had that blockage feeling in my gullet. I was in and out of bed trying to relax. Then at about 11:30pm I just made it to the toilet and was vomiting. That seemed to ease the sick feeling and I went back to bed. I must have fell asleep, but at 2am I woke and had the feeling of a bowel movement. Sat on the toilet and the feeling went away. From 2:30am I sat on the bed reading till about 5am. got on the bed and slept till 6:30am. On the settee now writing this, completely knackered and still have not showered..
Jan. 2013 A little bit more...
Clearing out his flat in Edinburgh and all his bits and pieces after he died probably wasn't as hard as clearing out the house in Liverpool which contained all the really happy memories. We had talked about his dying and I'd asked him about his wishes and so on. He had a few small bequests for his grand children and for his nephew and nieces in Liverpool and for Jill and her daughter also back in Liverpool, two people who had come to mean as much to him as anyone else. He wrote a few very brief notes to these people thanking them for their friendship their love and the help they had given to him and to my my mother during her terrible illness. It was a relatively simple thing to do and I was helped massively by my wife who has always helped me massively. The flat was cleared and a new occupant was found, a friend and neighbour so a nice way to tidy it all up.
It was probably a selfish thought but I looked always for a little note he might have left me. I had no doubt of his feelings for me so I didn't really need to see them written down, it wasn't that' I don't really know what it was, maybe just a selfish thought or maybe a way of keeping the discourse open with him (a bit like this blog) But, whichever way you describe it, no such note was found. And then at home 8 months later in a carrier bag of things brought back from Liverpool I found a piece of paper with a note written upon it. I knew right away what it was but this time I read it with different eyes and it's meaning meant more than I could have realised the first time I saw it and rejected it much to my dad's displeasure eight or nine years previously.
The note was the transcript of a letter my dad had written and sent to the company web site. I had set the web site up years before. It was quite pioneering at the time, a builders web site. I had tried to make it magazine like with articles about the trade and jokes and letters. As part of that process I tried to encourage people I knew to write into the web site with questions or tales and so on to give the impression that the web site was well read (or trafficked, I suppose the expression should be). My dad, wanting to lend support as ever wrote into the site. I thought his 'letter' was a bit 'cringy' (hence his displeasure) so I never published it on the site and, in fact, forgot all about it until in that carrier bag I found his original draft of the letter...
"talking about Steve, well we often do, we first met him on the 22nd February '55, we had made an appointment to see him about 9 mths before, but he kept us waiting for about 3 weeks. When he finally turned up he was a bit of a mess with not a stitch on, my wife soon changed that, in fact 'change' was the operative word for some time. Time passed, Steve became a loveable 'sod', a scholar and finally a builder.
During this period Steve stayed in Holland for about 2 yrs, while he was there he had a go at re-designing Schipol Airport, he made quite an 'impact' (Richard Murphy designs in a much more subtle way). Shortly after this he met Gail and from then on things really expanded.First Jason, then Mark and finally Stephenie. Oh Yes! then came 'Inscape'.
Pardon? Who are we? We are John and Dina his mum and dad. Our achievements? Well we had Stephen!! Quite proud of the fact."
That says it all for me. Thanks dad and I am very proud of you too, both of you. xx
These are scans of the order of service from his cremation here in Edinburgh. I'm not sure this would have been the music he would have chosen for himself but it all seemed to work wonderfully on the day. It was a sunny March morning and in as much as these things may be enjoyed there was joy, with family and close friends from Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh present. We went back to our house afterwards and lit the barbeque, we sat in the garden and told very nice stories and shared lovely memories and drank to both him and my mother. He was never convinced by thoughts of an afterlife and reunification but I asked him to keep an open mind. He did that for me too. "In dreams he'll be there with her."
We chose Paul's 'Waterfalls' for entrance music at the service:
We chose Paul's 'Waterfalls' for entrance music at the service:
Paul McCartney's 'Waterfalls'
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| Front & back cover, Order of Service |
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| Inside, Order of Service
And finally this was the Eulogy written by funeral celebrant John Edward Jones which quite nicely summarised my father's life:
Main tribute:
John Richard Evans entered this world when he was born in
Nesfield Street, Liverpool on Friday the 13th August 1930, a day his
mother said was ‘never unlucky for her’.
John’s Mother and Father, Florence and William actually had
twelve children, only two of whom survived, the first born, John’s Sister Elsie
and John himself who was the last of the twelve, sadly Elsie is also now
deceased.
At the age of about 4 the family would move to Exley Street
an address that would play a huge part in John’s life.
John’s education got underway at Butler Street County Primary
and it was from there that he would win a scholarship to attend Collegiate
College in Liverpool.
John was only 9 when the war started and like most children
in major cities he was evacuated to safer surroundings, in John’s case this was
to Northop Hall in North Wales, John would spend the next two years there
until, in his own words, he got fed up and ran away.
Aged only 11, John managed to find his way back to Liverpool,
where he stayed through the worst of the bombing of the City.
His father was an Air Raid Warden and John often recalled
some of his war time memories of seeing Liverpool literally burning and how he
used to go out and collect warm shrapnel from the streets after the ‘all clear’
sounded.
After completing his education at the Collegiate, John would
train as a Quantity Surveyor, of course as conscription was still in force,
John’s training would be interrupted when he was called upon to complete his
National Service, this he done when he was enlisted into the Royal Air Force.
After completing his National Service, John returned to his
roots where he took up employment with the Iconic English Electric, a huge
British Engineering Company that manufactured everything from Aeroplanes and
Trains to Washing Machines and Electric Motors.
Following on from there John would change direction
completely as he settled into the world of Insurance, starting off as an agent
with The United Friendly Insurance Company, he would rise through the ranks and
eventually become a District Manager.
John’s final move would be to the Guardian Royal Exchange where he would
retrain as a Financial Consultant selling Pensions and Mortgages to anyone he
could convince needed them, including several family members.
If we go back a little in time to the early 50’s, a golden
era of dance, a time when dance halls were almost ten a penny and absolutely
everyone knew how to waltz or jive.
Of course nowadays the closest most people get to these kinds
of dance is watching the celebrities glide past on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing
or other such TV programmes.
Yet back then dancing was something you actually go up and
did, and did it with style.
John was no different and at the top of Exley Street sat the
famous Grafton Rooms, a local dance hall, where The Beatles would later
play. Anyhow, it was on a night out
there that John would meet, fall for and do doubt dance with a lovely young
lass by the name of Andrina Turner, the couple started a relationship and
although neither could have known it at the time that relationship would go on
to span more than half a century.
John married his Dina in the local Registry Office on the 12th
December 1953; this will have been a proud and happy day indeed for the
couple.
Married life started in the front bedroom of John’s parent’s
home where they lived until renting their own house in Exley Street.
1955; Dina gave birth to their son Stephen. John thought the world of his boy and was very
proud of his achievements.
John’s older Sister also lived in Exley Street with her
husband Horace and their four children Billy, Vivienne, Joyce and Valerie, this
worked out well for them all, as being a very close knit family they would all
grow up together.
The family however, was split when the whole area was
rehoused in the 1960’s and John and his family moved to a flat in Sefton Park’s
Mere Bank, from there John and Dina bought their first house in the Woodlands
area of the city, after a few short years the family moved again, this time to
Mossleyhill Road, a lovely part of Liverpool that John said he didn't know
existed. They lived there happily for
the remainder of their married life, for over 30 years.
During his time in Mossleyhill, John made many good and
long-term friendships, people like Derek, Jim, Peter and Albert who have, along
with others made the long journey to be here today and for that the family will
be eternally grateful.
Dina, although herself born in Elsmere Port on Merseyside,
her parents were both Scottish and it was that connection to family in Scotland
that would bring John, Dina and Stephen on many holidays north of the border,
this in turn would eventually bring Stephen here permanently.
As the years progressed Stephen would meet and marry Gail,
and together they provided John with his Grandchildren Jason, Mark and
Stephanie.
Although for a good part of their lives there were many miles
between them, John loved them all equally and he followed their progress with
the greatest enthusiasm.
After sadly losing his beloved Dina some seven years ago, and
suffering health problems of his own it was decided that a move to Scotland
would benefit John and he indeed enjoyed the final two years of life surrounded
by his family.
Over the years John enjoyed many hobbies and pastimes, as a
youngster he was very sporty, indeed in his youth he was a sprint runner for
the City of Liverpool, he was a keen cyclist, a member of the RAF cycling
team. He played a lot of snooker and at
one point was a member of 4 different pub darts teams, he had a real passion
for golf which he enjoyed for more than twenty years and there will be many who
played with and against him and they will all have fond memories and tales to
tell.
I'm not going to tell you 100’s of stories about John, those
who knew him well would know that he wouldn't want his entire life story gone
over in every detail here today, suffice to say that John was a proud,
independent, Jack-the-lad character who took great pride in his appearance, he
was very competitive, had a great sense of humour and would never mix his
words, if he had something to say he would say it and was always ready to give
advice like if you want to chase a cat from your garden you should throw a
stone at it, but the stone has to be a specific size so it will frighten the
animal without hurting it.
John also, it has to be said had a few vices, he was addicted
to gambling machines, in fact he emptied the jackpot from the fruit machine in
the Roseburn Bar only a few weeks ago.
Having recently acquired a computer, John quickly realised he
could use it for gambling on line, in fact most of its use went on doing the
National Lottery.
John’s good friend Billy St. John was asked to sum up John’s
character, I think he done it well.
‘John was bossy, arrogant, a know it all who didn’t like to
be beaten at anything, he always had to be right and would never admit to being
wrong’.
That said, John was loved by all who knew him and he will be
sorely missed.
We are now going to have a few minutes in which to
cherish our own thoughts and memories of this lovely man and while we do so we
will listen to a song chosen by the family:
Joe Brown 'I'll See You In My Dreams'
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