johntomsett

Beverley Ann Refoy, 23 August 1957 – 5 July 2017

“Bev” was the first word I ever said. Bev was six when I was born and I must have been an absolute gift to my big sister. Imagine it. A dolly to play with that had real tears and real nappies; a dolly she could feed with a real baby’s bottle.

Bev was the pioneer for the five of us. She worked hard and was bright.

For me she was so important, because she was the first one to have a stab at taking A levels. I can remember the pain-staking attention to detail of her project on the Abolition of Slavery. I can still see the drawing on the project’s front cover in my mind’s eye.

And off the back of her education she was one of the youngest trainee managers at Tesco’s. She was certainly one of the very few female trainee managers in the late 1970s. For me and the rest of us in the family, she was the first one who thought there might be something more to life beyond our council house on School Hill.

We were always so very proud of her.

When Bev left primary school she was awarded the The Maresfield Bonner’s Bible for industry and diligence. Back in 2013 she made the bible a gift to Chloe, her god daughter. She loved all children, but especially her nephews and nieces. It’s no surprise the NSPCC is her chosen charity. When Chloe secured a new job Bev wrote this on her Facebook page in tribute: “I am so proud of my god daughter, Chloe West. She is to start her new primary school teaching post in September. Lucky children of Buxted. Chloe, I am sending lots of love and hugs, you little minx! By the way, I must apologise to our neighbours for our musical celebrations!” Bev certainly liked her music loud…

In this Bible, she cites the maxim, “Diligence is the mother of good luck”. She never shied away from hard work. She was gutsy. As she was dying, she began writing an account of her life. It captures her kindness and her work ethic. If Bev was anything, she was diligent. At her best she was profoundly kind. She wrote:

“Everything I have worked for I did with pleasure – there is no better feeling than knowing how hard you have worked. The feeling of achievement and to be proud to have that feeling is really good. Self-motivation and high self-esteem spur you on to the next stage of your life. I have enjoyed my life and I am surprised how quickly it has passed – my working enabled me to meet many different people, some of whom I am still in contact with. I have played many roles from management to cleaning old ladies’ bottoms – I found working in an old people’s home the most rewarding – (and I think this final line says a lot about Bev, about someone who struggled, really struggled, at certain times in her life) everyone will be old one day and need someone to simply give them a smile and treat them with respect regardless of their situation… someone to simply give them a smile and treat them with respect regardless of their situation…”

But there her account of her life stopped. It was cut short. Not everyone gets to be old Bevvy.

Bev really loved our dad. When I was writing about dad a couple of years ago, she wrote to me about him and I just want to read to you what she wrote, because, somehow, it is hard today to talk about Bev without talking about our dad. This is what Bev wrote:

“Dad was always there for each of us as we grew up. He took Dave and me for long walks in the country and knew everything about nature. He helped me with my stoolball, helped me ice and decorate my Christmas cake, and even tried to teach me how to hit a golf ball!

“Luckily for all of us his job did not interfere with home life. Once he clocked off he’d finished until the alarm went off the next morning. He was able to enjoy his post round out in the countryside, and was a valuable member of that community. He helped feed the lambs at the farm, took an old lady flowers and eggs, posted her letters and was the only human contact that she had.

“Every March he would pick the first primroses of the year and send them to Auntie Nancy. He was out in the fresh air every day, observing all four seasons, not confined to four brick walls like the majority of us are.

“I see dad in his own way as a teacher. He was not well-educated – through no fault of his own – but he taught us right from wrong. He showed us how to respect the countryside, kindness, honesty, stoicism, love and gratitude. Above all he was able to give each of us his time, a gift more precious than status or money. He was a very wise man.”

On one of the occasions I came down to Weymouth to see her recently, she gave me this, a small shield that she was awarded for taking six catches in a game of stoolball.  She had played for the women’s team when she was only 14. Stoolball’s a traditional Sussex game played by women, which is a bit like cricket, with the same positions for fielding. The shield is in perfect condition and she treasured it for well over 40 years. As she lay there in great discomfort unable to move on her hospital bed, she told me about how she won it, how our dad had come to collect her at the end of the game and how Rose Groves, the team captain, had said to dad, “here she is Harry, Miss Sticky Fingers”. The joy in her voice was as fresh as it was on that evening, all those years ago, when she was a winner.

On the way back to York on the train that evening, I wrote a sonnet for Bev and her stoolballing exploits.

And that’s how I will choose to remember Bev. I will look at this shield and imagine her, deep in the Sussex countryside, running around the stoolball pitch, taking catches in the late evening’s summer sunshine, her face lighting up as she shows our dad her trophy. A smiling free spirit, with everything to live for, and not a care in the world.

I have been a teacher for 29 years, a Headteacher for 14 years and, at the age of 53, this much I know about writing, the limits of language and catching a sea trout.

Any representation of an experience is never going to rival the immediacy and the sensations of the real-life event itself. Faithfully recreating the intensity of an experience in words is, arguably, an impossible challenge. So many times words fail us. How often do you hear people say, There are no words to describe what happened?

Despite the impossibility of the challenge, this summer I set myself the task of writing a description of catching my first ever sea trout. Now, on reading this, the majority of readers will be reaching for the mouse to close this tab. But, essentially, this post is about the process of writing and the limits of language, not fishing.

To help me write about catching my sea trout I read for the umpteenth time George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant, in particular for the detailed description of the elephant as it is dying. Even when I had done that and set out to write the piece, I could not find the form I needed. And then I began reading Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones, a novel written in a single sentence and surely a favourite for making the Mann-Booker Prize shortlist. Both texts were key in shaping what I have written…all art is theft.

So, here is my description of catching my first ever sea trout. I have held every single word and every piece of punctuation up to the light for scrutiny before confirming its inclusion. And when it comes to representing the thrill of catching a sea trout, these 450 words fall short, as they were always destined to do…

Catching a Sea Trout

One fruitless cast, slightly short of perfect, is followed by another where the lure flirts with the overhanging branches at the pool end and then sinks out of sight before the slow, deliberate retrieve begins, and then a knock and then, a nanosecond later, a whacking thump and the spectacle begins as my brain computes what is happening, as the moment I have anticipated since dawn, a dozen hours earlier, arrives, but still, when it happens, my senses are scrambled by the shock of it and my arms and hands fumble to establish control of the rod and reel which are near ripped from my grasp as the fish understands, more acutely than me, that the fight is on and summons all the energy it possesses as it makes for the depths, lunging downwards to the river bed as I resist its frantic dash, striking hard, setting the treble hooks, rod arcing towards the river, the reel’s drag screeching, but no sooner I think I know where it’s gone than it changes tack and surfaces, skittering across the pool and I marvel for an instant at its wild, thrashing, tail-walking, gymnastic frenzy, then, before I realise it, the fish plummets down and down only to turn tail and hurtle skywards at a rattling rate, emerging from the water in a fleeting leap for freedom, an awesome, ephemeral display of powerful, piscine aerobatics which ends abruptly when it dives again, lurching one way then the other and I’m scanning this way and that for where it will appear next and suddenly it’s just a few yards away, surging into the river’s edge, seeking sanctuary amongst the tree roots, and my pumping heart tells me this is the decisive moment, this is when I can lose it all, where the fish swaps itself for something gnarled and immovable, and the gamble begins because not enough force and it’s lost in the roots, too much and the hooks rip from its jaw, so I hold my nerve, pressing my elbow that little bit harder on the rod butt, tightening the line, increasing the strain, ramping up the pressure and for those crucial seconds the dipping, plunging rod tip telegraphs down the line the news that we’re still connected, the hooks are secure and now the balance of power shifts as I ease the fish, slowly, back into the current and the struggle resumes but this time I’m in control when, without warning, the rod bend eases, it surrenders and suddenly I see the silver broadside ripple across the water, it’s under my boots and in the net, hoisted high above the river’s flow, trophy-like, a three pound sea trout –

Click on the image below to hear an audio representation of me catching my first sea trout…

I have been a teacher for 29 years, a Headteacher for 14 years and, at the age of (nearly) 53, this much I know about how our colleagues are first and foremost people.

If I have learnt anything in my time as a head teacher, it has been the value of chatting with my colleagues about things other than work. We all have a life going on beyond school, a life which is more important and which is often emotionally demanding. I am amazed, on a regular basis, at how colleagues keep doing a great job when they are living through difficult times outside of school.

My first duty as a head teacher was to attend a funeral of a new colleague whose husband had died in his mid-forties during the last week of August. She had gone to bed and left him watching the telly. When she woke up the next morning she went downstairs to find him dead on the sofa.

Everyone has a backstory. Our colleagues are first and foremost people, something school leaders like me do well to remember.

My big sister, Bev, was six years old when I was born. Imagine! Mother brought home to Bev her very own baby dolly, but it was for real, with real tears, real nappies and a real feeding bottle. I doubt she ever left me alone. No wonder the first word I ever said was, ‘Bev’. Here she is with my elder brother David, just about managing to keep my top heavy self on her knee.

Over the last two months I have journeyed to Weymouth and back every other weekend to see Bev. She has been slowly dying of cancer. A couple of weekends ago she gave me one of her most prized possessions, a mini-trophy for taking six catches at a Stoolball tournament when she was in her teens. On the train home I wrote this unrhymed sonnet; the rhymes are there but not at the ends of the lines, reflecting the sense of dislocation I felt as she went into decline.

Early yesterday evening Bev died. She was just 59 years old.

In his final interview before he died at the age of 61, Philip Gould, Tony Blair’s close adviser, said this to Andrew Marr and I have had it pinned on my office wall ever since: ‘What would have been better for me would have been to have said, “I’ll do what I can do, which I do quite well” and then just push it back a little bit’.

Gould’s insight came too late for him, but it isn’t too late for me or you.