Tuesday 27 August 2019

Reginald John Poulter – 7th July, 1929-18th August, 2019



We had been living with Dad having Alzheimer’s for a decade and a half. Perhaps longer. It's always possible that random lapses of mindedness going even further back were signs. In which case, I’ve got a grim future (one in eight of us - at least - will succumb to this cruellest of afflictions. Today there are 50 million people globally with the disease. By the middle of this century, that number is expected to reach 150 million).

We’re not entirely sure, either, what the trigger was, but a mini stroke some years ago followed by prostate cancer clearly contributed to a cognitive and physical decline that either caused the onset or contributed to it. Either way, it’s been a slow progression. From mild symptoms of forgetfulness, through the gradual erosion of both short and long-term memory, to an eventual end-stage when the brain and the body start disconnecting, functionally, and communication goes from barely verbal to just a hollow stare. This is Alzheimer’s: the progressive erasure of a life. I’m not being flippant by describing it in this way, but think of Marty McFly in Back To The Future, except unsuccessful in preventing himself from vanishing from his own future. More starkly, think of Die Hard’s Hans Gruber, falling away from John McLane’s grip at the top of the Nakatomi tower, only in even more, painful slow motion.

This time last year Dad went into Galsworthy House, the care home on Kingston Hill where, 12 months later, he would leave this world. His increasing immobility and a series of falls - probably brought on by the Alzheimer’s – brought us to the point where he was too much of a danger to himself and to Mum. When he fell, we needed an ambulance crew using a specialist device to lift him again. He wasn’t big, far from it, but he was a dead weight that fell at awkward angles (fracturing a vertebra, we later discovered, because it was never articulated at the time). The home was wonderful, a big old stately place. Dad had his own private room with a window looking out on his beloved Richmond Park. For the first few weeks, months even, however, he was more preoccupied with leaving it. “Are we going home now?”, he would incant, to be met by some plausible explanation-to-a-child as to why he’d be staying put, which would be repeated as often as the question it responded to.

Eventually the question loops ended as Dad accepted – mostly - his new surroundings. Occasionally, in moments of unbridled lucidity, they would surface again. Here’s where you realised that Alzheimer’s affects the brain like the CPU of an ageing laptop. The cabling between the brain’s various departments becomes frayed, forcing it to take shortcuts. Graphically, you can imagine these different sections closing down. There is compulsive, repetitive behaviour, which I always assumed was the brain trying to find a path that worked, like a guide rope leading out of a smoke-filled building.

Dad’s eventual death, in the early hours of Sunday, 18 August, was the first time in adulthood that I’d experienced the demise of an immediate relative. When we went to see his body that morning, it didn’t look all that different to his condition two days before, when I sat with him, sleeping peacefully, for the better part of an hour. I wasn’t to know he’d be dead 36 hours later, but perhaps, it wasn’t a surprise. On the previous occasion I’d seen him awake, there was no recognition of me. I could have been his son, or simply a shape before him. I thought, then, that the light was dimming. This forms the core of Alzheimer’s cruelty, the fact that you can see the physical manifestations of a lifetime, of loved ones and relationships, visibly disappearing before you. Without being too morbid, we do all turn to dust, along with our memories, but with Dad, living as he did until six weeks after his 90th birthday, it was something of a comfort that he had lived so long, even if his latter years were beset with such health problems.

Now his life is over we can reflect and recollect. In my case, even discover things for the first time, especially as we search through his fastidiously collated archives of paperwork, mementoes and obscurities which, collectively look like ephemera but by themselves carry vivid stories. We uncovered a cricket travel game called Owzthat!, which came in a tiny tin and comprised two hexagonal metal die, one each for bowling and batting scores which were recorded on a piece of paper. Simplest of pleasures, but the appearance of Owzthat!, on a wet afternoon, marooned in a rain-soaked Welsh self-catering cottage, was a bright, shining highlight of childhood. Along with Spencer, the glove puppet (another simple concept – namely, a sock with two buttons for eyes, which would generate hours of mirth). Dad was clearly someone who collected things. A holiday to a previously unvisited part of the world would necessitate the purchase of a new Ordnance Survey map for that particular area. A repeat visit would necessitate the purchase of the latest version of that map, just in case geography and roads had changed. These are just some of the adorable foibles from my own 51 years as his son, and I realise that these are just the tip of the iceberg of a life.

My elder brother, Martin, recalls even more: Dad selling his treasured old racing bike at Pitfields in New Malden to buy him a new one when money was tight; the bathroom at our old house - the one I was born in (and am here pictured outside) - which Dad, a keen photographer, turned into a makeshift dark room, complete with blackout boards for the window and a red light outside to keep out interlopers while he was developing film. My brother reminded me of just how creative Dad was: for the annual canasta 'tournament' between our parents and our aunt and uncle in Plymouth - a fiercely contested affair - Dad made a trophy out of a painted slab of Polyfilla, mounted beautifully on a piece of polished wood, with his impeccable sign-writing skills applied to the inscription. That trophy, much like The Ashes, would shuttle up and down the A303 according to the victorious participants. Dad would always be making things out of wood scraps. The garage still contains some of his tools, long since used of course. He once made a very good go-kart for my brother, fully capable of taking him around the block, using the slight slope from our road to the next for propulsion. Alas, a practical skill I've not inherited.

Perhaps this self-reliance stems from the fact Dad was born in 1929, at the end of The Roaring Twenties in the year of the Wall Street Crash, which heralded The Depression; a teenager during World War II; a husband in the '50s and father to three babies between 1959 and 1967; an elderly man in the Digital Age. He never got the Internet, or mobile phones for that matter, but he always loved being shown photographs on ours, especially of our own life adventures. Photography was his thing. Few family pictures exist without a camera strapped around his neck.


He was no Luddite, though: a trainee electrical engineer at the age of 15 in wartime Birmingham, joining the Great Barr Telephone Exchange at the age of 16, returning to London from evacuation in 1946. With an aptitude for such things, Dad was called up for his National Service on 1st January, 1948, aged 18, where he was dispatched to Catterick Barracks in Yorkshire to train as a radio mechanic in the Royal Corps of Signals. Somewhere ahead of him at Catterick was Sydney Lotterby, later to become a BBC producer and director, with Porridge amongst his many credits. While in the Signals, Dad worked on radio calibration for the Parachute Regiment, for which he managed to blag a coveted Paras' red beret, later hanging in the garage, covered in decorating paint. On being demobbed in March 1949, Dad rejoined the Post Office as a telecommunications engineer. It was here, while working out of telephone exchanges in the Surrey area, he met Mum, a telephonist at Elmbridge exchange. I have a romantic notion of Dad, up a telegraph pole, chatting up Mum, though neither ever corroborated such an idea. One thing she does remember, however, is Dad applying for a job at the BBC in 1954.

It was here, successfully employed from 1st November, 1954, that he began his 35-year BBC career, to our enormous pride and advantage as a family. It was here, too, that over the following years he earned a sequence of promotions, starting out as a ‘dolly operator’ in the camera department before becoming a camera operator full time. Eventually he would become the head of a camera crew – Crew 4 – at a time when, slowly, senior camera operators began to get credits at the end of programmes, though it wasn’t commonplace. Thanks to this, however, parts of my father’s BBC career are installed for the rest of time on the pages of the Internet Movie Database, IMDB.com, with entries for episodes of Eastenders, Doctor Who, Last Of The Summer Wine (produced by one Syd Lotterby), 'Allo, 'Allo, Hi-Di-Hi, and Only Fools And Horses (for which he’d maintain was his most enjoyable studio experience due to the on-set camaraderie between cast and crew).

Inevitably, we’d benefit as a family from his work at the BBC, getting to visit Television Centre on many occasions. I, in particular, got to be in the studio audience of Top Of The Pops (a much coveted ticket, in its day) a few times, and also met all the stars of BBC children’s TV when he was working on the All Star Record Breakers, the end-of-year special version of Roy Castle’s gentle celebration of achievement. One year I filled up an entire autograph book with the signatures of people like the Blue Peter presenters, Johnny Ball, Brian Cant and others from Play School and Play Away.

I’m buzzed by those encounters, even now, and that’s after I’ve met plenty of famous people in my time as a journalist. To the child-me they were my idols, long before I would make idols out of rock stars. In fact, early on in my career, there was a strange moment of crossover when, a couple of years before Dad retired himself, I went up to Television Centre to interview Philip Schofield (in his Broom Cupboard/Gordon The Gopher days) for Smash Hits magazine. I seem to remember Dad not being that impressed, even though the interview took place not far from a production office where he himself had worked. In 1988 I joined the fledgling Sky TV, and the sort-of family footsteps progression was complete. I was, however, hardly a media brat. I was never encouraged to work in the media. But I know how proud - secretly, perhaps - he was that I’d carved out a career in the industry. When I moved into technology with Philips, we had something new in common, given his army and telephony days, and indeed the fact that the bit of Philips’ business I was responsible for in my PR role was the consumer electronics arm.

By the time I returned to the UK, in 2016 and after 17 years abroad (and now working in telecommunications, another link to Dad’s professional origins), Dad's Alzheimer’s was already advanced, though he still had some degree of stubborn mobility. Osteoporosis, a side-effect of treatment for prostate cancer, had rendered him bent-double. We grew used to this figure appearing at door handle height, still getting himself up and down stairs, vainly refusing to use his Zimmer frame. That period always struck me as profound. His insistence on still propelling himself, as stubborn and even as stupid as it was, indicated his state of mind - decaying, it may have been, but he was still prepared to fight.

That fight ended last week, peacefully and painlessly, from what we can gather. To the end, Dad maintained his famous reserve, a quiet dignity. The lights may have been flickering, but the looks he’d give Mum, in particular, showed that his love for the woman was undiminished after the better part of seven decades together. It was hard, at the end, to know what he recognised or acknowledged, even with Mum sat beside his bed. She, for her part, has been brilliant. As painful as these last 12 months of separation have been, Mum has been stoic, accepting even. That doesn’t ease any pain of losing your husband, a week and a half short of 66 years of marriage - but I’d hope her knowing that Dad’s final days and hours were peaceful and in comfort would at least be of comfort to her.

They say you only appreciate how someone shaped your life after they’ve gone, but I’ve always known what Dad has instilled in me. Firstly, and perhaps foremost, a sense of humour. Actually, I get this equally from both parents (Mum’s remains robustly intact, I’m happy to report, despite her 89 years and various challenges to health and wellbeing of her own). Dad’s sense of humour came partly from the things he found funny. Even as the first signs of dementia were showing, he could still lose it watching a Tom & Jerry cartoon, or a Pink Panther film. Slapstick was clearly his thing, but thanks to his curation of tapes of old radio comedies like The Goon Show, Hancock’s Half Hour and The Navy Lark, and our gathering around the dinner table at 6.30 each weekday evening to listen to I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, Just A Minute or some such comedy in Radio 4’s  ‘funny half hour’ before The Archers, I gained an appreciation for ‘the theatre of the mind’. Dad once took me to see Jacques Tati’s comic masterpiece Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, one Saturday afternoon. I would have been 13 or 14, so being dragged to see some black and white film featuring a French actor with little if any dialogue sounded like the absolute worst, uncool thing he could possibly take me to. I ended up loving that film, and still do.

There are many moments of mirth that I could recount here, but would take an entire book, not a blog post, to record. Indeed, in a life of 90 years, there’s so much about Dad that could be retold, largely to convey who he was, but also to provide therapeutic process. There’s no space for the holiday recollections, those annual visits to Devon and the gales of laughter that blew up the stairs from the living room below during that canasta tournament; being stuck outside the pub in Tolworth with a packet of crisps and a lemonade while he and my grandfather shared a beer; damp cottages in Cornwall and rain-soaked fortnights in Wales (yeah, while the rest of Britain turned brown in the drought of 1976).

Every family has such memories. It’s what’s called normality. The cruelty of Alzheimer’s is that Dad’s memories were washed away as the disease progressed, along with name recognition in the latter stages. And then the eyes grow hollow and you have no idea as to whether you’re a son or just a noise. Others’ experiences will, no doubt, differ.

Strangely, though, my dad’s incarceration over the last twelve months has been mostly without any heavy drama. I can’t speak for other family members, but even the sight of him in his wheelchair, parked up in the care home dining room like Operation Stack lorries on the M20, for enforced viewings of old black and white films, didn’t upset me as much as I thought it would. But twelve months is a long time. In recent weeks the contraction of various infections and illnesses, all symptoms of the body’s gradual disconnection from itself, moved him from unwilling participant in the Cuckoo’s Nest to being bed-ridden and struggling to communicate (or not at all) and slowly creeping up on Death’s Door.

Dad’s passing has been my first true experience of family bereavement, other departures not withstanding. You find coping mechanisms, the self-reassurance of saying to yourself “He’s comfortable” when, in truth, he probably wasn’t. And later, “He’s still got his dignity,” when the reality is somewhat less. But still you remain stoic. You know the worst is coming, but it’s just too convenient to recognise. And then you go and see Paul Carrack at the London Palladium, and he performs The Living Years, the Mike + The Mechanics song he leant his sublime, blue-eyed soul vocals too. And then you realise that you are tearing up. Properly moist. Beads of tears down the cheeks. The voice as wobbly as a resigning prime minister on the steps of 10 Downing Street. And you feel winded, not because you’ve involuntarily started crying in public in your 50s, but because reality just caught up with you like a mugger in a dark alley. But it’s a warning sign. A sign that you’re vulnerable to emotion, even if you’re rationalising things simply, it's still the sore throat heralding the full-blown bout of flu that is fully grieving. That is still to come.

Now, today, I’m still in a strange place. Perhaps due to being more mentally prepared for Dad’s death than I’d realised. And whether that’s a good thing or not, it has allowed me space to appreciate what a wonderful life Reginald John Poulter had in his 90 years, the fun and laughter we had as a family, the cool stuff we got to experience through his job, and the profound, enduring love he had for his wife, consciously or not, right up to the very end.

While going through his things, my brother found, in his wallet, three tiny photographs. One, of (we presume) a family gathering not long after Dad had met Mum; the second, one of my mum, brother and sister when the latter were still in single figures; and thirdly, one showing the infant me, together with Mum and my siblings. An enduring reminder of what we meant to him. And what he meant to us.

Monday 12 August 2019

Sweet bird of youth

Picture: Richard Pelham, The Sun
I'm still staring at the calendar in disbelief. It's Monday, 12 August. My shoulders continue to peel from the blast of Florida sun I've just returned from. My work inbox is groaning under the weight of e-mail traffic seemingly indifferent to the fact I've been on holiday, each missive tugging at my coat screaming "read me first!". Of course, the myriad reply-alls which simply say "Thanks." are straight in the bin, as should be the individuals who inconsiderately sent them (word to the wise - I really don't care that you're thankful. I do care that you're bunging up my inbox with a message for someone else).

Such holiday harrumphing aside, I'm staring at the date because it means that first blood has already been drawn in the 2019-2020 football season. Around the country in recent days there have been qualifiers for the FA and League cups, the Football League began the previous weekend, and we've just witnessed the opening salvos in the Premier League. It's the same every summer, I suppose: games watched partially in holiday resort bars, out of desperation for some sight of football in most cases, and escape from the family in many others. These first weekends for the respective leagues are the beginning of an arcing season that will clamber through the temperature changes of summer, autumn, winter, spring and summer again, with the prospect of breaking out the mid-season parka and gloves now still a long way away, but in reality, only a matter of weeks. As the TV commentators have been predictably stating, there's a long, long way to go.

Which is why yesterday's events at Old Trafford should be meaningless. Because, we are told, the first game of the season is. And the second. And probably the third. These are, however, the views of those with false hope. An opening day tonking, such as Chelsea suffered yesterday, can always be rationalised, justified, even. The optimist will look back on it and make hopeless excuses: "They were still at the beach"; "The pre-season friendlies don't mean a thing - it's always different when they get down to the real work"; "We've still got players coming back from injury/the summer tournament/settling in to the new side"; and yada, yada, yada.

Chelsea have turned over so many managers over my lifetime (and not just in the Abramovich era, either), that the arrival of each new one is always a test of faith, belief and expectation. Frank Lampard's status as a club legend makes no difference than that which accompanied the appointments of Ruud Gulitt, Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Di Matteo or even dear old Geoff Hurst, many moons ago. All equally expendable, none particularly qualified. Like his predecessors, Lampard fits a narrative, only this time it's a little more spun out: the two-window transfer ban imposed on the club, coupled with the acute need for the club to reconnect with a fanbase alienated by Maurizio Sarri's stubbornness and Antonio Conte's slide into uppity petulance. Hence a focus on youth, a commodity the Stamford Bridge faithful have desired more than anything else, given the plethora of young talents that have been husbanded out on loan deals. With Eden Hazard gone, and the FIFA ban preventing external reinforcements, Chelsea are being forced, very publicly, to rely on a combination of inexperience (manager and players) and relatively unproven potential (youngsters Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham, Reece James, 20-year-old American wunderkind Christian Pulisic, Fikayo Tomori, plus Callum Hudson-Odoi and Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who started to get opportunities last season, before being cut short by injuries).

Lampard has already played the 'I've got to work with what I've got' card to rationalise his Premier League managerial debut. I don't blame him. But from the perspective of some fans' point of view, be careful of what you wish for. We've looked on, frustratingly in recent seasons, as Chelsea's acclaimed academy has produced trophies at a better rate than the first team, without seeing many - or even any - of that youth progressing to the senior squad. Now Chelsea have been forced into drawing on the kids, with Lampard placing it as a pillar - if not the pillar - of his maiden season as a Premier League manager. With his tight little crew around him of Jody Morris, Eddie Newton, Chris Jones, Joe Edwards and Henrique Hilário, Lampard is clearly a risky bet, given that he only has the one season as a coach under his belt, and a Championship coach at that. So here's a perfect storm: two or three major factors conspiring to install a young, unproven coach in charge of a squad containing young, unproven players at this level. Chelsea have virtually signalled that it will be alright if things go pear-shaped this season, though any study of the Abramovich form will show that no one, no matter how much of a much-loved club son, will be immune if things go too pear-shaped. Just ask José Mourinho.

Ah, yes, Mourinho. Always the scene stealer, as he managed to do yesterday as Sky Sports' star summer signing, being allowed to upstage his fellow pundits (including resident alpha male, Graeme Souness) as they presided over proceedings at Old Trafford between the Portu-geezer's two former teams. And, as Brucie would say (and I don't mean Steve), "Didn't he do well?!". Despite José's less than subtle "come and get me" plea to clubs, we actually got to savour the footballing intelligence that turned a very minor player into one of the most successful coaches of all time, to date with 25 major honours to his name.

"Chelsea were too soft, not compact defensively, not aggressive enough, there was too much space between the lines. They did not press in blocks," Mourinho told Sky Sports viewers after the match, in what had been an assured punditry debut for the channel. "A little bit of experience would fit well with the team. You look to the performance of Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham and for matches of this dimension you need a little bit more," questioning why N'Golo Kante - only recently returned to the squad from injury - was left on the bench by Lampard at the start. "If Kante can play 30-35 minutes he can start the game. And then if he lasts only one hour then he lasts one hour. But maybe Frank listens to us and says Kante is impossible to play. My feeling is that they had a possibility to play with more know-how," adding that the experience of Marcos Alonso and Olivier Giroud were also sitting on the bench. "To come to Old Trafford, even if this is not the huge Manchester United that used to scare people, it's Manchester United."

Don't get me wrong, I want Lampard to succeed. Ever since talk began of the club's record-scorer returning as manager, I've warmed to the idea. Not piping hot, I'll readily concede, but given the circumstances, if the club is prepared to have a fallow year while it bloods in the youth while unable to buy new players, then so be it, and we should be able to enjoy the love-in with our much-loved former No.8. And yes, too, this was just the first game of the season. But Mourinho is right: it was still Manchester United - even 'this' United, with its own young manager and a dysfunctional misfit like Paul Pogba - at Old Trafford on the opening weekend. However, to blame Lampard's selection of youngsters like Mount and Abraham, would be wrong. There was a broader naiveté to Chelsea's structure yesterday. As Lampard himself conceded, four mistakes, four goals conceded. Blame for at least two of them can be laid at the feet of club captain César Azpilicueta, who seemed to pick up where he left off in his last, indifferent season, and Kurt Zouma, still only 24 but whose signing for Chelsea at the age of 19, then loans and injuries, gives him an air of club experience and history. Whatever that experience is deserted him yesterday. One might concede that not even David Luiz - now departed for Arsenal - would have conceded such errors. Much expectation weighs now on the return of Antonio Rüdiger to the Chelsea defence. But with Luiz gone, it's surely fair to say that Chelsea's options at the back aren't huge, even with the talented youngsters Tomori and James available in the full back positions.

That Chelsea dominated for large parts of the first half yesterday should not be forgotten. But there are - and should be - very real concerns about how Manchester United were able to suck the Londoners in and then hit them, hard, on the break. Even with the likes of Loftus-Cheek, Hudson-Odoi and Willian still to return from injury, their talents are not defensive. Nor, too, was the now much-missed Hazard, to be fair, but Lampard has to ensure that his expressive attackers can be as steely in the defensive phase as they are in the offensive. In this, he has to take on board Mourinho's valid criticisms, even if he has a point that injuries limited his options. Unfortunately that excuse only goes so far.

"I don't have to be too concerned about what anyone else says, the pundits," said Lampard, responding to his former boss. "But what is clear is the squad is the squad we've got and I believe in it. I can't drag people out of the medical room, whether they're experienced or not. The players we played today, and on the bench, are the players we have. We were missing internationals and big players, but I don't want that to be an excuse. We were competing for long periods. We made four mistakes and they put them away. It is a reality check for us all. It wasn't a 4-0 game for long periods, but we need to accept it."

Lampard is, and always has been one of the more likeable figures in the game. Articulate and intelligent, as well as gifted on the pitch, he has been long destined for management, perhaps even more so than his former oppo John Terry. But brains and eleven expensively-acquired GCSEs (including an A* in Latin) mean little when a) you're working for Roman Abramovich and b) competing in the Premier League. One could easily interpret Mourinho's "a little bit of experience" comment about Lampard's team selection as a jibe about Lampard himself. Mourinho has rarely pulled his verbal punches, and you wouldn't expect him to do so even when commenting on a former player whom he might still regard as one of his football 'sons'. Even José is capable of being cruel to be kind.

I'm no Statto, so my memory may not be 100 per cent here, but the last time I saw Manchester United beat Chelsea 4-0 was at the old Wembley in 1994 in that year's FA Cup Final. It was a miserable afternoon, made worse by having to trudge back to Fulham to start a 12-hour night shift at Teletext, relieving the day duty editor who happened to be a massive United fan, and who took great pleasure in taunting me from his lofty seat on the mezzanine floor as I came through the front door. I was too jet lagged yesterday afternoon to be that bothered by this latest 4-0 drubbing. Lampard's comments, post match, were the right ones, but they somewhat passed me by. "As a manager I feel things are slightly magnified," he said. "You take wins and losses more and this hurts," conceding the mistakes that lead to the goals, but defensively pointing out that "anyone with football experience will tell you that it wasn't a 4-0." Unfortunately, Frank, it was. How you and your team responds now will be the mark of you as a manager.