Chris Evans - It’s Not What You Think

However, this morning, Dad’s shop, as I said, was the first to open in town that day.

The man, not unlike the horses, was chomping at the bit to get back into the action, so when he saw Dad’s shop with the blinds up and the open sign hung on the door, he had no hesitation in entering.

‘Morning, Martin.’

‘Morning, Fred.’

‘Am I the first?’

‘You are indeed and a pleasure to do some midweek business with you at last.’

‘Well, what an honour. Let’s have a look then, shall we?’

‘Please go ahead.’

And with that, good old Fred started to study the form from racing pages Dad had pinned to the walls of his establishment half an hour previously.

Fred mused for a while, casting his eye over the various ‘opportunities’, before finally plumping for a choice. He placed his usual style of bet. It was a forecast—that’s the way Fred always betted, and lots of people used to bet that way. The chances of winning were next to nothing but it was a lot of excitement for very little risk, not dissimilar from how the lottery is today. However, if a forecast did come in, there would be no need for any more shifts at the soap factory, that’s for sure.

And that is exactly what happened. The frost had thawed, the horses had been saddled, Britain was racing again and Fred went and picked a string of winners.

The bet wiped Dad out. He was the only bookie I have ever heard of that was taken to the cleaners by a punter.

The win was so huge, he couldn’t afford to pay Fred straight off, but he was a man of his word and vowed to return him every penny that was owed. Unlike his partner, who would have nothing to do with the whole affair. He reasoned that Dad should never have taken on such a bet without first laying it off, something he himself would have insisted upon doing.

Why hadn’t Dad done this? In truth, who knows?

Maybe it was because he didn’t have the time to do so with business being so brisk and all—on the first day back after the longest forced break in jump racing since the war. Maybe he was too excited and had simply forgotten. But maybe it was also because he took a chance.

Maybe he took a chance that the odds were massively stacked in his favour and massively stacked against Fred, and as a man who knew his maths well and his racing odds even better, he thought it was a risk worth taking—a safe bet, if you like. But as we all know, there is no such thing.

From that day onwards Dad’s wealth would never be financial, but that doesn’t mean to say he would never be rich. He had a woman he adored and who adored him back and he was the head of a loving family. ‘It’s not what you’ve got in your life, it’s who you’ve got in your life,’ he used to say. Now there’s a wise man. A very wise man indeed.

10 Her name, Minnie. She was named after a horse but it suits her perfectly

9 Her obsession with death and anything or anyone dying

8 Her art for telling stories for hours on end and hardly ever repeating herself

7 Her magic hotpot from the war recipe, hardly any meat but oh so meaty*!

6 Her directness—second only to her vivid imagination

5 Her vivid imagination

4 Her rapier wit

3 Her wicked laugh

2 Her selflessness

1 Her love for my dad

My mum is a formidable piece of work, simple as.

When she had her cataracts done on her eyes, for example, she was well into her sixties and she requested only a local anaesthetic—this was so she could stay awake during the operation and see what was going on. Not an easy thing generally, but especially as this particular operation involves the popping out of the eyeball and the resting of it on one’s cheek, while the back is then duly sawn off ready for a new, artificially improved lens to be attached.

Upon hearing a patient had requested such a thing and for such reasons, the consultant surgeon was at first a little shocked before becoming aware of the prospect of a rare opportunity. He wondered if he could also make the most of the situation with a request of his own. He asked my mum if it would be alright for him to invite some students in to watch the procedure and, if she could bring herself to bear it, would it be permissible for them to ask her questions as it took place? Mum was over the moon, she couldn’t get enough—apparently she had the students in stitches the whole time she was being operated on.

Before we were born Mum was many things, but for most of my childhood, she was a state-registered nurse.

Mum was one of the original night nurses. She started off working in psychiatric care at a place called Winwick Hospital, notorious in the area for being the local nuthouse. Looming large off the A49, it was set back in glorious green parkland and looked exactly like a Victorian prison, though it never had been. This was a proper insane asylum, designed and built solely for that purpose. At one time my dad, my brother and my mum all worked there. As a consequence of this I had been through the infamous heavy black iron gates many times. I even had the pleasure of wheeling the odd harmless ‘patient’ down some of its eight miles of corridors.

After several years of diligent service with the loonies (she said it was exactly like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , still her favourite film) Mum went on to work at Warrington General Hospital. She always worked nights so she could be with us, her children and her husband, to whom she always referred as Dad, in the day. Her hours were shiftwork, always 10—6, usually, three nights on, four nights off, alternating with four nights on, three nights off.

Now of course this was all well and good, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out this meant she would be getting very little sleep. Here’s one of Mum’s work days:

Finish at 6 a.m., picked up by Dad, home soon after, where she would grab a quick half-hour’s shut-eye ‘in the chair’. She would then make Dad his breckie, get my sister and I up and ready for school, feed us and then see us out of the house just before nine. Next she would start on the housework and go to bed just before lunchtime where she would languish until three o’clock before having to get up to prepare for the family’s return. After making our tea and washing up, she would have another quick half-hour’s shut-eye ‘in the chair’ before getting herself washed and dressed for work and ready for Dad to run her back to the hospital for her next night shift. By my reckoning that’s no more than three hours’ sleep a day!

During all the years she did this, I never heard her complain once. In fact she only ever laughed about the crazy episodes her and her colleagues came across while the rest of us were in the land of nod. Like the Christmas Eve that Mr Jolly died whilst on the loo: she thought this was hilarious and seeing as it was she and her pals who had to get his trousers back up around his bottom and hump him back to his bed, they felt a little laughter was the least they were allowed.

After Dad passed away Mum was forced to take on the one remaining role she’d been spared thus far.

Never the greatest at maths; my mum now had to handle the family accounts.

I remember distinctly her sitting us down and telling us the score. She told us she’d sold Dad’s car for eighty pounds and that was it.

‘That was what?’ we wondered.

‘That was it,’ she repeated, ‘that’s what we, as a family, are now worth.’

Our house was rented from the council and we didn’t own anything else. Mum had resisting selling Dad’s car before he died as a mark of respect and so the neighbours wouldn’t talk, but now he was gone, so was the Vauxhall.