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| George's beach |
As I’ve mentioned here before (and I’m sure
it was just as interesting then…) I live on a farm. I am not a farmer, I just
live on a farm. It is a very large farm – the bit I live on was originally 3
separate farms, but they have all been acquired by a single family, and two more
of the adjoining farms are also owned by cousins of the same dynasty, so this
is a very big set-up by UK standards – thousands of acres devoted to potatoes,
wheat, barley, leeks, cabbages, sprouts and so on. Apart from a thriving riding
stable and livery business, the only livestock here now are in a big indoor
piggery a couple of miles from my house.
This is probably screamingly obvious to
everyone apart from a townie such as I was when I arrived here, but the
economics of farming have altered greatly over the last century; when I first
moved here it was very clear that a small number of men with tractors and motorised
equipment could handle all the work which had required a whole lot of manual
labour before WW2, and much of the farm workers’ housing here had thus been
sold off to reclusive people like me – mostly in the 1970s, in fact, but that
is how I come to live on a working farm. In the last few years this has changed
further – the farm now leases out most of its fields to be planted and
harvested by specialist contracting firms – big, industrial-scale operators who
own no land of their own, but rent acreage on a year-by-year basis. Thus the
farm now has very few permanent staff – their involvement in the leased fields
is merely in the preparation of the land – ploughing and so forth – for each
year’s new planting. They do still harvest their own wheat, in fact, but
otherwise our fields are regularly full of strange machines, and a great many
young people from Ukraine, Lithuania,
Poland, you name it – British young people, it seems, are not interested in
working that hard, thank you, and anyway it would impact their housing benefit.
Well, Old George was my next-door neighbour
when I first moved here in 2000. He lived on his own, and, while not exactly
antisocial, he liked to keep to himself. He’s dead now, but I often think about
him. He was the oldest person I ever met and, in his quiet way, he offered a
valuable reminder of what is comforting and what is scary about old age.
First thing I remember about him is that he
never complained about anything, even when his eyesight was mostly gone and his
hearing was dodgy and he was having difficulties with his balance, he was
always cheery and polite, always put on his best clothes for church or for his
weekly visit to the Buttercup Café in the village.
George was born in 1909, in the Shetland
Islands – his family had a grocery business in Lerwick, and he was one of seven
children. When I first met him he was 91, and he was at least as lucid as I was
at the time. It became very clear, very quickly, that George did not appreciate
people fussing after him, or doing things for him, so a great deal of secrecy
and deceit went into the concealment of any favours anyone did him. I asked him
what he did in the war, and he simply said he had been too old to be called up,
so I didn’t pursue the matter, but after he was dead I read that he had served
in the RAF (he was a sergeant) on motor rescue boats in the Mediterranean,
based for a while in Egypt – not only that, but he had been decorated for gallantry
in rescuing downed aircrew.
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| RAF fast launch based in Egypt |
His family had moved to Edinburgh in the
1930s, in search of employment. George worked as an accountant for a well-known
confectionery company, and after the war he moved to work for the hydroelectric
company. When he retired from the power company he took a job at the farm where
I now live. He had never married, and he had care of two of his sisters, one of
whom was mentally handicapped, so he was concerned to keep up his income. He
managed the farm office here for a good many years, well into his 70s, and is
still remembered very clearly by any lorry driver who ever had the temerity to
turn up late with a delivery, or who brought some kind of short measure. The
farm’s books were invariably spot on – and woe betide anyone who compromised that
situation.
When I met him his sisters had both died,
and he had retired at last (by 91, we should hope so!). He had indefinite use
of one of the farm’s own cottages, and remained fiercely independent. I used to
be aware of him going for his daily walk down to the beach, or in the woods,
and used to worry a bit about his safety, but one very real concern was that he
was still driving, though his eyesight wasn’t nearly good enough. He had a
little, sky-blue Ford Fiesta which he kept in the sheds across from my house,
and one day – sure enough – he knocked a lady off her bicycle on the country
lanes because he couldn’t see her. Fortunately she was not hurt, but he
received a letter from the County Sherriff’s office, requiring him to present
himself at the court to answer charges of dangerous driving. Typical of the
man, he told me that he had written back to them, stating that he did not care
for the tone of their letter (since it sounded as though he were “a criminal or
something”), and that they had replied that if he would surrender his driver’s
licence by return they would drop the matter and not pursue the charges – and
he laughed aloud at his own cheek.
For a while he used to spend the Christmas
period with relatives in Surrey – so a great deal of planning went into
organising taxis and flights to get him down there. Since I was one of the
keyholders for his personal alarm (provided by the local authority), I started
getting phonecalls late at night from the social work department, saying that
George’s electricity was switched off, and would I check that he was all right.
I knew he was away, but went next door anyway to check his house was in order,
and kept finding his power was switched off. I would switch it back on, and
next night I would get another call, and again I would find it was switched
off. After a few iterations of this, it became clear that another neighbour,
who also had a key, was coming in each day to check his mail (i.e. snoop around?)
and, being very safety conscious, was switching off his mains electricity.
We sorted out that misunderstanding, but it
became very obvious that poor Old George wasn’t really able to cope on his own
– his house was filthy, and one aspect of this which gave me the creeps was
that in each room there was something like a giant hammock stretching between
the picture rail and the central light fitting – about 10 or 15 years’
accumulated spiders’ webs. It was very tempting to get an industrial vacuum
cleaner and smarten the place up a bit while George was safely in Surrey, but
he would have been mortified, and would never have forgiven me.
Not coping comes under various headings, of
course. At one point his regular taxi driver mentioned to the social work
department that he appeared to have nothing to eat in the house, and a couple of
well-meaning girls from the Council came and visited him and brought some
ready-meals for his fridge. George, predictably, was very angry, which is
understandable since he could not read well enough to identify what was in the
packets in the fridge, nor how to cook it, and since his eyesight was so bad
that he could not safely use his cooker without risk of burning the place down.
As time passed he had a couple of falls
when out walking, and then one winter I kept finding his lights on at strange
hours of the night – on investigation, it turned out that he was refusing to
take his medication, and was very confused what time it was – some nights he
forgot to go to bed, and on one occasion was found on the floor. This is
difficult to think about now, since it sounds – even to me – that we should
have done more to take care of him, but George would have chased us with a
broom if anyone had tried anything more invasive than keeping a general eye
open. He told me once that he had a standing reservation for a room at a
nursing home in the village, but he couldn’t see why he would wish to go and
live with a lot of old people.
“I’m sure I’ll have to go there one day,
but I’ll be dead in six weeks if I do. I’m happy here - I love to see the deer
crossing the farm roads, and I like to hear the tractors setting off at
daybreak to work on the land.”
George was taken into the local cottage
hospital around Christmas 2008 – I knew he would be outraged, but at least he
would be warm and safe, and would get his meals and his medicine. He was still
in the cottage hospital when his 100th birthday came around, and
there was a surprisingly large celebration, involving press photos of the Lord
Lieutenant of the County and all sorts of people who would not normally cross
the street to speak to George. I got a brief chance to speak to him, and asked
him how he was doing.
He said, “Well, I’m not sure – mostly I
think it would have been a lot less bother if I had just shot myself when I was
80!” and he laughed, of course.
Obviously he couldn’t stay in the cottage
hospital indefinitely, and it was just as obvious that he couldn’t go home
again, so eventually he moved into the nursing home, as he had feared he would.
I know that you expect me to say this, but it’s true – he didn’t last six
weeks, he died within a month of being admitted to the home. Maybe he just lost
interest. After he died there was a bit about him in the local paper – things
that I never knew, and that he would never have dreamed of telling anyone. In
his day, apparently, he had been an excellent golfer, and also a fine singer
and fiddle-player, and his wartime activities were always a secret.
Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I imagine
him lying awake next door, and I wonder what he used to think about.
