It’s sad enough to have to lose a loved one but what is sometimes even worse is dealing with the things they have left behind; their clothes, their books, their personal items. The shampoo and shower gel in the bathroom, the uneaten items in their fridge, the notes on the coffee table; the fragments of their lives.
My brother Colin died almost two months ago and even now I find it hard to believe. Going home a couple of weeks ago I picked up two pizza bases from the shops. I bought two without thinking because I’d usually make Colin and me a couple of small pizzas for when he came round for one of our regular bi-weekly chats.
One of the first things I looked at when I went into my brother’s flat was his phone. He had two phones. One was unlocked but contained little information. No banking app or email account. The other phone was locked and I tried all of what I thought would be memorable numbers for him to use as a phone password. His date of birth….. no. My birthdate…… no. I tried my mother’s and father’s birthdates but no, the phone refused to open.
Colin and I used to speak on the phone every few days. A long time ago when mobile phones first became popular, we decided that when we would speak together on the phone, we would talk in either German or east European accents. I’m not quite sure why we did it but we maintained it over a number of years, although it could be a little embarrassing if I suddenly answered the phone in a German accent in the bar or in a restaurant.
Looking on the internet I searched for what are the most used codes for unlocking a phone. The most popular was 1-2-3-4. I trolled through the list but nothing seemed to work. 2-2-2-2….. no! 6-9-6-9….. no! About halfway through the list I got to the point where the phone would lock up for a minute after each failed attempt. Finally, I tried 3-3-3-3. I was watching a TV show at the time and was about to move on to the next suggestion when as if by magic the phone opened up.
There was no banking app which was what I was looking for in order to sort out his financial affairs. Looking through his house there didn’t seem to be any particular place for important documents. I found some in the bedroom, some in the lounge and some in the kitchen. Colin wasn’t very tidy. He was also the laziest man I have ever met. His first job after leaving school was in a high-class men’s tailors in Manchester city centre. Among the clientèle were presenters from the local TV news shows Look North and Granada Reports. Colin once told me he had served the guy who played Alec Gilroy in Coronation Street. His boss was a very well to do fellow who lived in Wilmslow and every morning he picked up Colin for work at a busy junction by the Bluebell pub. He used to drive a Rolls Royce and Colin was living at home in Handforth then and you might think that with his boss picking him up in a Rolls Royce, and waiting at a very busy junction, he would be keen to get up out of bed and get ready for work.
Well, things worked out ok for a short while but as time went on, Colin realised that getting out of bed in a morning was not for him. My mother told me that she used to sometimes throw a pan of cold water in his face to get him up but even so, he began to leave his boss stranded at the Bluebell and would arrive at work round about lunchtime. Soon he was presented with his p45.
The only other job he ever had, to my knowledge anyway, was a sales job in Rome in Italy, selling timeshares or insurance or something to English speaking people in that far away city. He didn’t last long there and made his way across Europe to a place called Nijmegen in Holland. He stayed there for quite a while and he even met his first girlfriend there, a girl called Inge with whom he stayed friends for the rest of his life.
Soon his money ran out and he was repatriated back to the UK with my mother, as usual, paying for his return.
Not long after coming home he had a nervous breakdown and that began a cycle of mental health issues that plagued him for the remainder of his life. He once told me that it all stemmed from bullying at school although I have to say, I always remember him as being such a happy and cheerful youngster. Clearly, things are not always what they seem.
He had arranged a funeral plan with a company called One Life which went bust back in 2024, however, I was sure he had taken out an insurance policy with Sun Life some time ago. I called them but they had never heard of my brother. I called another company and they said the same thing. ‘Have you tried Sun Life?’ they asked. I had but they had no record of my brother. Try again, they suggested. I tried again and this time the company came up with Colin’s policy which was actually linked to a funeral company so I was able to quickly begin the funeral arrangements.
I thought his laptop would probably tell me a lot about his affairs but it too was locked. I once again tried various numbers to no avail but I noticed that his email account was on his newly unlocked mobile phone. I clicked on the ‘forgotten passcode’ button on his laptop; a new code went to his emails and soon I had access to his laptop even though I found nothing of interest there. It’s interesting though how his digital footprints leave hints about things that he did. There was an email from Netflix reminding him to finish an episode of Star Trek he had been watching. Another was from a mail order company thanking him for his recent clothing purchases and offering him discounts on his next order.
Colin lived in a council flat and I was sure they would be keen to take over the place and get new tenants in but happily, the staff I dealt with at the housing office were friendly and sympathetic and gave me time to sort things out.
I took lots of his old clothes to the recycling centre and quite a few charity shops were the beneficiaries of his numerous DVDs although I must admit, I kept quite a few for myself. Colin was an avid buyer of leather jackets and although some of his older ones went to the recycling centre, I still have about five of his newer ones.
A charity place called The Tree of Life came and took away his washing machine, fridge freezer and microwave. I took away his big television screen on which I’ll probably watch the British Grand Prix this weekend. I went to hand his keys into the council but first I thought I’d take a last look around. I checked everywhere and picked up a few last items I thought I’d keep. I had been surprised that I hadn’t found a great big box of photographs as a long time ago Colin always used to be taking pictures.
As I took a last look around, I noticed a bin bag in the corner of a cupboard just by the door. More old clothes I thought but when I picked it up it was full of photographs, the very ones I had been looking for. I was so glad I had found those pictures as there were so many taken at home when he and my mother and father were still alive.
Colin: a self portrait
I dropped off his keys and later I found myself watching one of his old DVDs, sat in a chair wearing his aftershave, sporting one of his newly purchased T-shirts and drinking one of his leftover bottles of Pepsi Max, his favourite drink. That is the thing with death, someone dies but the world does not stop or even take a breath. The buses keep on running, the sun continues to rise and the dead man’s possessions are still there, waiting to be sold or given away or distributed to others via charity shops and other outlets.
Despite never having any money Colin had an expensive TV package from Virgin Media. He loved his black and white classic films and spent a fortune on numerous leather jackets as well as going everywhere by taxi. Until our mother died, he was forever asking me to bail him out of debt but in recent years helped by a PIP claim (Personal Independence Payment) and a small inheritance from mum he finally had some money in his pocket.
He was looking forward to getting himself a free bus pass but sadly, he was taken away much too soon. He was 64 years old.
My brother died this week. As you can imagine I’m pretty upset. He was the younger brother so the accepted plan was for me to die first but somehow, things didn’t work out that way. Still, to a certain extent my brother was a burger and pizza eating TV watching couch potato so perhaps him dropping dead like that was not really unexpected. He was a guy that I sometimes wanted to slap and tell him to sort himself out, to clean his flat up and wash the pots and hoover up and get himself off his lazy backside and get a job or do some training or something.
Got the picture yet? The film is Alfie. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert who also directed some of the earlier Bond films. The script was written by Bill Naughton and adapted from his own book and play. Alfie is a fascinating film on many levels. It’s a peek back at the swinging sixties; it explores the elements of comedy versus drama, something I’ve always loved and which I looked at a while ago in a post about the 
That may sound like an odd title for a blog post but I actually pinched it from the BBC website before adding a small but subtle change. I was scanning through the news and right at the bottom of the page I saw something about My Life in 5 Dishes. It was actually a BBC podcast series in which several celebs are interviewed and asked to name 5 meals that somehow relate to their lives. One episode which I partially listened to was Nigella Lawson talking about elements of her life including her mother who had various eating disorders and died when Nigella was young. A dish she used to make was a sort of chicken stew and Nigella used to make the same dish for her family which in turn brought back memories of her mother.
As usual when I’m stuck for a blog post I tend to look back on my old posts for a little inspiration. I’ve already produced 
As this is my 484th blog post I hope I can be forgiven for tending to repeat myself now and again. I’ve probably said this before but what the heck, I’ll take a risk and say it again; I really don’t like this time of the year. I don’t care for Bonfire Night or Hallowe’en and on top of that I’ve experienced some unmitigated disasters this week involving video cameras and my mobile phone. Anyway, what shall I moan about first? Let’s get Hallowe’en out of the way!
At Liz’s house she still has an old fashioned coal fire and I have to admit that it’s nice sitting by the fire with a bottle of wine just on the hearth gradually coming up to serving temperature. The big pain is having to go out in the cold and rain to fill up the coal scuttle and to light everything on a cold morning instead of just clicking on the central heating button.
Things didn’t start well when my GoPro camera wouldn’t charge up. I had my trusty Canon GX7 with me but I had wanted the GoPro to take some additional stuff. Luckily in my bag I had my cheapo action camera with me. It’s a cheap GoPro copy that takes reasonable video. Anyway, the tram arrived which I filmed on my Canon. I nipped aboard and went to a seat at the front where I clipped my handy suction mount to the window and pressed record. Well, I thought I had pressed record but in fact I’d pressed the wrong button and nothing happened, not that I realised it at the time. I left that to its own devices and shot some hand held stuff with my Canon. At the airport I had a wander around and filmed some chatty stuff to the camera then went down the walkway towards terminal 2 which incidentally, in a few short days I’ll be flying from!
Birthdays are not something I look forward to these days. Years ago, when I was a school boy I did look forward to them, at least I think I did. Now I come to think of it, I’m not sure I was that bothered about them even back them. I do remember as a schoolboy being very impressed with the film 2001 A Space Odyssey and I started working out if I stood a chance of being alive in the then distant year of 2001. I was 45 in 2001 which to a young schoolboy must have seemed pretty ancient. Add on another 20 years and that same schoolboy would surely have imagined himself as a decrepit old guy barely alive in 2021. The thing is, despite being 65 I don’t really feel that old, at least, not inside.
Decisions can change your life. That’s why it’s important to make the correct one but it’s always seemed to me that I tend to make the wrong one.
Of course, we had to factor in the anti glare coating and I had asked for what I always call Reactolite lenses, lenses that go dark when it gets sunny, apparently now called ‘Transition’ lenses. Yes, I can do you a great price said the optician, £245!
I don’t know about you but this hasn’t been a great week for me. I started off with a bit of an ache in my right arm but when you are as ancient as me you get used to your body sending over these signals of age every so often. After a few days it became worse, a nagging ache that turned into a pain. As it happened, I’d had that pain before, in fact, I’d even written about it in a blog post. I was going to write about it again but there was the old blog post just aching to have new life breathed into it, to be rewritten, remodelled or repurposed as we blog writers like to say. After all, no work of art is ever finished, just abandoned. Of course, I do have a sore arm and it’s difficult to type at the moment but what the heck, anyone who knows me understands that at heart I’m just a lazy old codger and so instead of writing something new like a real writer, here’s what happened last time I had a sore shoulder.
OK, here we go. Remember the post from a few weeks back? Life story in less than 2500 words? You do? Great stuff. Here’s the continuing story then, this time restricted to 2390 words.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 