“We risk becoming an island of strangers” Keir Starmer.*
Now that I am old and full of sleep I find that people are occasionally starting to offer me their seat on the tube. It happened twice on a packed Metropolitan line train yesterday. Both the people offering were young women wearing hijabs.
We live almost at the summit of a very steep hill, so coming home laden with luggage is always a bit of a slog once we’ve got off one of the many buses that stops nearby but doesn’t dare try to ascend it. There are no routes. I suspect the drivers might need oxygen. At any rate, there is always a slight air of base camp about us as we pause at the bottom, look ruefully at each other, up at the slope, take a breath...”ready for this?”
Getting to that point close to midnight on Sunday in the rain, and a young black bloke in a car opposite starts shouting at us. We couldn’t make out what he was saying and initially weren’t sure he was talking to us, or had just stopped to shout at someone down his phone, or whether he was being threatening or not. So many urban myths, so little time. Thinking he might need directions, I wander over to talk to him; and it turns out he’s seen our predicament and was offering us a lift, which we very gratefully accepted. Friendly young man. Helped us in and out of the car with the luggage. Good deed for the day.
And on the way back, we struggled out of the lift at West Ham station just as our train was drawing swiftly in. Being a four carriage train it was sweeping ahead of us down to the far end of the platform, so we ran after it – limped in my case – as fast as we could, lugging backpacks, trundling wheely suitcases with bags balanced on top and pulling a heavily laden shopping trolley. On flopping down in a seat, having heaved all this up into the carriage- “pfff!” the Eastern European woman sitting opposite catches my eye, smiles and offers me a drink of water because “you look out of breath”.
Our neighbours aren’t strangers, and nor, it seems, are strangers.
* I know that Starmer now says that he deeply regrets using that phrase, but doing so was not an accident. All speeches of that sort are worked over many times by many people and every phrase is designed with calculated effect – which button will this push, which strings will that pull, what kneejerk reaction can we get with the other? His regret comes from being caught outas these calculations blew up in his face. He doesn’t, however, seem to have learned from this – that the xenophobes and racists he is trying to impress won’t be impressed and anyone who wants to fight them will be repelled – because he’s still on the same course towards disaster.
This is the story of my Mum’s life written and told by me and my brother at her funeral on 15/10/2025.
CHRIS We would like to welcome you all to this commemoration and celebration of the life of our mother Patricia Joan Atkin. In particular, Shirley and her family who are joining us from New Zealand, Colin and his family in Spain, Brian in Lincolnshire and Penny in Shetland.
It is lovely to see so many of you once again, just 4 months or so since we said goodbye to Dad. We always said they would not want to be parted for long and so it has proved.
In accordance with Mum’s wishes this is a non-religious ceremony, but there will be moments later for reflection, contemplation and prayer if you so wish.
PAUL Mum was born in January 1930, slightly closer to the start of WW2 than the end of WW1, to very young parents, Bill and Mabel Burford, who were both 20 at the time.
She spent her first four years in her maternal grandparent’s very crowded house in Bedford Road, with her parents, grandparents Charlie and Jinny, and their youngest children, Edie, Arthur and Syd; the last two of which were young enough to be playmates as well as uncles, and she was always very close to Edie.
Mum’s first memories were of being terrified by an army pipe and drum band that came skirling out of Grays Park while she was playing in the street, running home and banging on the door to find a place of safety from “that terrible noise”. Mum never liked sudden, loud noises (like me, or her Mum, doing the washing up).
CHRIS She did indeed instil in us a concern about being quiet and thinking of others; If we arrived home late from a trip out with Mum and Dad, she would always insist we didn’t slam the car door, talk loudly or make a noise as ‘there might be babies asleep’. As a pre-school child I remember crawling up the stairs as silent as a ninja on the rare occasions she allowed me to go upstairs for something when Dad was on night shift.
So it must have been an act of adolescent rebellion to some extent when I started to learn the drums in my teenage years. She was surprisingly tolerant of this, but her legacy had an impact as I couldn’t help checking the immediate environment surrounding any gig we might play and think ‘what if a baby is asleep…?’
PAUL An early memory she often mentioned, was of being taken out in her pram by one of the girls down the street and coming home with a dandelion shoved up her nose. Mum never liked bullies, so when she started school she went with a group of kids who were going to look after her. Crossing the road to meet them she was hit by a car which, luckily for her, and us, was going slowly enough just to leave her with bruises and a serious concern about road safety.
When she was 2, her grandmother died and, after a while, her grandfather remarried a woman she did not remember fondly – “old Maud” – and she did not get on with Maud’s daughter, with whom she had to share a room. So, her parents moved into 131 Hathaway Road, one of the new “Homes fit for Heroes” council houses that had been built less than ten years before.
Mum therefore had to change schools and went to Quarry Hill Primary where she came across a boy in the same class – memorable because his was always the first name to be called in the boy’s register, as hers was in the girl’s. She helped him find some lost drumsticks during a school Xmas performance and, as dad said “she’s been helping me ever since”.
As a child Mum played on the playing field (except on Sundays when the council chained up the equipment to preserve the Sabbath) and watched the Council dig trench shelters on it during the Munich crisis in 1938.
On her birthday the next year, she’d wanted a bike. What she got was her baby brother John. I know the family has always inclined to be neat and tidy, but sharing a birthday with a nine year gap might be thought taking this to extremes.
CHRIS Within 9 months of John being born, WW2 broke out and the family was moved to Dumbarton. Mum’s Dad Bill being a docker, was in a reserved occupation essential to war work and the docks just outside Glasgow were thought safer than those in Tilbury.
However, because the family were so homesick, when Bill received call-up cards by an administrative error, he didn’t challenge it and was drafted into the Royal Engineers so called “Dock lot”.
The rest of the family came back to Grays where Nan worked with the Rationalisation Committee at the Coop and Mum spent a lot of nights in an Anderson Shelter with a wireless, lamp and a map she put pins in to follow movements on various fronts. This followed another very brief evacuation to Wales with a friend that lasted several weeks, during which Mum climbed trees by the railway line and made plans to stowaway on a train to London to get back home. Holding on to home was very important to her, and she never moved out of Thurrock her entire life.
The family didn’t get through the war unscathed. Syd, Mum’s youngest uncle and the closest to her, was killed in Tunisia, when his lorry drove over a landmine just days after the Afrika Korps had surrendered. The date of that was burned into Mum’s memory; and his older brother Arthur, who Mum said used to sit by the fireside cracking jokes, died in 1952 of a virus he picked up in Burma with the 14th Army. Syd’s name is on the War Memorial in Grays. Arthur’s isn’t.
PAUL The wartime experience of rationing and “make do and mend” made Mum see food as sacred – there was nothing worse than wasting it – and very careful with resources, keeping things “that might come in handy”. That included an enormous green bottle of calomine lotion that lived under the sink for decades because there was just too much of it to throw out with a good conscience. It took us a long time to persuade her to let it go. Reduce, Reuse Recycle being reflexes for Mum that long predated the environment movement.
On Matriculating from Palmers Girls, Mum got a job as a Secretary with Scottish Widows in the City and enjoyed commuting up there with a friend who worked nearby. She also did evening classes at Grays Tech, where Dad spotted her, ran down the road and asked her out to the pictures. Mum said, “he seemed nice and chatty, so I said yes”. And that was that for the next 80 years.
After Mum and Dad got married in 1952, looking like a pair of film stars (I always thought Mum looked like a prettier version of the Queen and Dad was like Gregory Peck with a stronger jaw) they lived with Dad’s parents in the top two rooms of their house on Ireton Place. That worked out very well and I was born in 1954.
After a short move to a flat in Tilbury we moved back to Hathaway Road – which seems to have a pull like a benevolent black hole – and stayed there ever after. After two years of doing it up in the long lost modernising spirit of Barry Bucknell – remember him? -and John coming to stay with us when his parents moved to Kent; Chris was born there in 1959. During her pregnancy, Mum was offered Thalidomide, but didn’t accept it because she thought she’d manage better without it. A good call. Though, if President Trump is watching, she almost certainly took paracetamol, and made very sure we were vaccinated.
CHRIS Looking back, it feels now like we grew up in a kind of Ladybird book; Mum and Dad took on unchallenged 1950s gender roles, largely because they hadn’t been challenged; with Dad going to work and Mum staying at home to look after us, part cook, part cleaner, part nursery-nurse, teacher, part accountant and manager of home economics.
One of Mum’s roles was passenger in charge of navigation when we took any trips in the car to holiday destinations or other places. A huge OS map across her knees and instructions such as ‘keep on going on this blue road, then we need to turn right onto a red road..’
My very earliest memories are of just me and mum- pre-school years; waving Paul off to school in the deep snow of ‘big freeze’ winter of 1962-1963, always being given a choice of what to play with so she was free to be industrious in the kitchen, being taught to recognise and spell my name, doing a jigsaw of the Beatles together and inadvertently locking ourselves in the cupboard under the stairs. Mum had to call for our neighbour- Mr Barton- through the small window to come to rescue us. She told me some years ago that the incident had terrified her, but she gave absolutely no indication of that at the time. Mind you, she once said that I didn’t actually speak until I was 4 years old and I’m pretty sure that’s untrue.
PAUL Mum being very organised, there was a definite routine to all this. Elevenses, a coffee and a biscuit, was always at 11. Not exactly on the dot, but near enough. We always had a break to “Listen with Mother” at a quarter to 2 on the Home Service because, at the time, this wasn’t just the title of a programme, but an instruction passed down apostolically from Lord Reith. Big jobs had definite days, a bit like the Scaffold song. “Monday’s washing Day, Tuesday’s Soooop”. Washing originally done boiling sheets in a big pan with tongs, a washboard and a mangle.
Mum was a great cook and baker, and made mince pies that would definitely be in line for a Hollywood handshake on Bake Off (an ounce of extra fat in the pastry is the trick – and Jamie always uses that when he bakes, so the tradition lives). At one point in the sixties she went on a World Cookery course, which seemed to focus mostly on chicken, and tried out Coc Au Vin and an extraordinary Mexican dish that involved chicken, chocolate and chilies – they were wonderful; but we never had them again…
CHRIS Mum’s Chocolate Cake was my favourite and I always requested it for birthdays or special occasions. The other thing I loved that mum made was Fish Pie. She complained that it was fiddly and bit complicated to make and when I left home she gave me the recipe. For over 40 years I have made many lovely Fish Pies, but never have I managed to make one like she did, or as taste good as she did. I have never even attempted to make a Chocolate Cake…
PAUL When we all caught chicken pox in 1959 and couldn’t go on holiday. Mum and Dad bought a telly instead. Mum and Dad always watched “the news”; to which Mum’s reactions were often quite fierce. Probably the first time this made a strong impression on me was Mum exploding at a report of the Sharpeville massacre in 1959, when South African police wearing coal scuttle helmets shot down anti apartheid protestors. “JUST LOOK AT THEM! They even LOOK like Nazis!”
Mum had definite views. Always voted Labour, liked Michael Foot and Tony Benn, voted Remain, thought Nigel Farage was a dangerous charlatan; and, during a recent dementia assessment, when asked “who is the President of the United States?” replied, “I don’t know, but I do know that I don’t like him!”
CHRIS She went back to work in the early 1970s when I started secondary school – first with the DHSS, then the local Education Department before settling in to being a librarian – which is very appropriate because, for Mum, if anything was more sacred than food, it was BOOKS. And if there was something more sacred than books, it was LIBRARY books. Because they belong to everyone, and other people would be reading them, they deserved special care. The same personal responsibility for social goods that meant you didn’t drop litter or put your feet up on bus or train seats that other people would have to sit on. And you washed out your milk bottles and recycled tins.
She read constantly and widely. Biographies, novels, crime, Armando Iannucci and Alan Bennett. And she had similarly wide musical taste, from Jack Jones and Charles Aznavour to Glenn Miller, Mozart and many more from what Tom Lehrer called “that crowd“; who she found thrilling.
Retirement in the 1990s coincided with the arrival of grandchildren – which was good timing – first Joe, then Sasha and Jamie; and she was an engaged and loving grandmother who all of the kids felt safe with and nurtured by; while she also helped look after her Mum in her last decade. Retirement also meant walking, Tae Chi, visiting family and friends.
PAUL Ill health in the last ten years or so, came in the form of falling over several times – “I go to walk and my legs don’t move” as she put it, then arthritis in her hip, which made walking even with a stick or frame quite painful; so she didn’t move about much. As she said “its alright when I’m sitting down”. So we watched a lot of Heartbeat and Midsomer murders and Vera.
In the end, Mum went suddenly, pretty much how she’d have wanted it. Quick and relatively easy on her and everyone else. On the Friday, Chris and I took her for a spin around the field in the wheelchair, and she reminisced about playing on it 90 years before. On the Saturday, woken in the morning by a headache that turned out to be a cerebral haemorrhage, she was beyond all pain and sensation by the time we got her to Basildon, quickly though that was, and just drifted away by the evening with us around her during the day.
I think the word that comes to mind most thinking about Mum is “animated”. In just about everything she did, or was involved in, she took enormous delight in what seems to be the smallest of things. “Cup of tea Mum?” “Ooh! LOVELY!” Its heartbreaking not to be able to wake her up in the morning with that question, a kiss and a weather report.
CHRIS I want to leave you with a fanciful thought. We were and are not a spiritual family, but a incident happened that although certainly just serendipity gives me some comfort.
On Mum’s last day in hospital it was obvious that she was no longer with us- just her body in existence and beginning to be at peace when I took Juhi and Sasha back to Hathaway Road. After a short stay I went to get in my car and noticed a plane flying in parallel to Hathaway Road and opposite Ireton Place.
Dad was always fascinated by planes and flight. It was some sort of fighter type and I thought- ‘oh, there goes Dad’. A minute earlier or later and I’d have missed it. Then I thought, ‘of course, he’s gone to pick Mum up’ and I have a very clear image of Dad in the front concentrating on piloting the plane and Mum in the seat behind with her bag and cardigan on and an OS map across her knees saying ‘we follow this red road, then turn left by the river and follow it to the sea’. I’m not sure where they are going, but they are going together.
This is the story of my Dad’s life written and told by me and my brother at his funeral on 27/5/2025.
CHRIS
Welcome everyone and thank you for coming to this commemoration and celebration of the life of Ronald Henry Atkin.
A chance to say goodbye to our Dad.
As you may have worked out, Dad was in many ways an unconventional man and in accordance with his wishes this is a non-religious ceremony, but there will be a moments later for reflection, contemplation and prayer if you so wish.
PAUL
The heavy rain today reminds me a bit of a joke Dad used to have when we went on weekend family outings in the old Morris Minor in the sixties, and the weather refused to cooperate. He would say we were out on “Atkin Sunday”, guaranteed to be the one day in the year in which the rain came down sideways.
To begin at the end… as part of the essence of living a life is that we have to leave it.
A few weeks before he died Dad asked “What am I for now?” It struck me that this was a very characteristic thing to say. Dad always wanted to be useful, helpful, always wanted to make sure that everyone else was alright. Whenever he was in hospital, his first question was always “is Mum alright?” It also struck me how being cared for is a useful role in itself. It enables people to come together in being kind and to find redemptive qualities in each other; solidarity not solitude.
CHRIS
Any brief autobiographical account like this one of Dad’s life may give an impression of a solid-straight line. Born in Grays, lived in Grays, died in Grays. Married for 72 years, 2 boys -us- not quite 2.5 children, but close, a long working life at the same factory and a long retirement. His story however was much richer than this and although his work-ethic was born of a loyalty, love and need to provide and care for his family, he was a man of very wide interests and tastes. With an open curious mind, interested in culture, politics and art and in people.
He was a warm, intelligent man with a wry sense of humour. In many ways self-taught- his education interrupted by war and attending an all-age single class village school for three years. He loved such things as Shakespeare, Ballet concerts and Classical music as well as the Rolling Stones and Jazz, Ian Dury and Paul Simon. He was interested in anything we were interested in; culture, history and politics on the one hand and music, drama and football; Spurs in particular, on the other. The latter being solely down to me I’m afraid.
He liked fine things- single malt whiskey, books, bow ties and cuff links. He also loved owls and had a large collection of ceramic owls. There will be a little more on the significance of owls later.
PAUL
Dad was born in 1930, in “interesting times”– 6 months after the Wall St crash, two and a bit years before Hitler came to power- and when a revolution in aviation -which always fascinated him throughout his life- was developing as fast as things like new chocolate bars were being created.
At a time when the average family size was shrinking, he was the only child of his mother Ruth and father Cecil (known as Tom) and grew up on the Hathaway Road estate, where he lived for almost all of his 94 years – surrounded in childhood by aunties who looked like peas in a pod and cousins who were as close as siblings – particularly Ruth, who’s here today and, at 97, will probably outlast the lot of us. He also had a very tight link to his cousin Len, until Len emigrated to Australia as a ten pound pom in the 1950s.
As the tallest boy in his class at Quarry Hill school he was always being given things to carry and wave, including the banner that kept the children together as they were marched in a crocodile to the station to be evacuated in 1940.
CHRIS
Evacuation was a formative experience for Dad and in many ways a positive one; he was safe, he was surrounded by the countryside, living in a large Georgian farmhouse in Little Somerford in Wiltshire with plentiful food.
He spent three years in Wiltshire at a time when people from Little Somerford often referred to people from Great Somerford as “foreigners”, but he fitted in. He helped with the harvest, pumped the organ in the local church, perfected his ability to mimic accents, developed his love of nature – he made us all birdwatchers in a low key kind of way – But he was homesick and really missed his family. In the three years he was away, he had one visit from his Mum, and one visit from his Dad; and this also gave him his lifelong empathy with people displaced by war and other disasters.
PAUL
When his parents thought it was safe enough, he came home, only to be narrowly missed by a Doodlebug that wiped out the houses at the bottom of Cromwell Road, another that landed next to his Nan’s house on London Road and bombed them out, and an incendiary that hit his parents house in Ireton Place. Luckily this ended up on the concrete floor of the pantry, where it fizzled out. He also looked out of his bedroom window one morning and saw a Junkers 88 dive-bombing somewhere to the West, which turned out to be the railway line at Thames Board Mills. Dad said he was impressed by the skill of the pilot who hit the line smack in the middle, but also by the skill of whoever the slave labour saboteur was in the Nazi munitions factory, as it didn’t go off.
Towards the end of the war, Dad (and Len) joined the Air Training Corps, which used to meet in the hall at Grays Tech; where he also attended evening classes.- which were also attended by Pat Burford- our Mum.
In 1945 the election of the Attlee Labour government introduced the National Health Service, which Dad always felt was the bedrock of a humane post war society. It was also the year that Dad ran down Hathaway Road after evening classes to catch up with Mum, and started a conversation that lasted for the next 80 years, starting with the immortal words “Will you go to the pictures with me on Saturday night?”
CHRIS
He had left school at 14 -although, he sat the 11 plus in Wiltshire, all the Grammar school places were for “local children”, so he never found out if he’d passed or not- and had a variety of jobs – at Thames Board Mills, delivering milk, a painter and decorator with Osborne’s. At 18 he was called up for National Service with the RAF and as he’d always dreamed of being a pilot, they decided to make him a wireless operator, instead…
He told his grandson Joe -now a professional musician- that the secret to Morse Code was not to get too hung up on the individual letters, but to listen to the music of it.
Dad could find the music in most things.
Sadly, Dad also found that he was often airsick and did not pursue any sort of career involving aviation. In any case he had met Mum and was very keen to build a future life with her as soon as he could.
PAUL
Stationed at Gloucester, a long way away from Mum, he had a colleague send him the local weather forecast for wherever she was, so he had a connection with her. There is a blown up photograph from this time on display in the Clarence Road entrance to the Grays Shopping Precinct, that shows Mum and Dad crossing Orsett Road with their arms around each other in about 1949*. Dad home on leave looking impossibly tall in his RAF uniform; and risking a charge for not having his cap on.
CHRIS
After being demobbed, Dad got at job at Proctor and Gamble, and spent the rest of his working life making soap, washing powder, Fairy Liquid. Early on he said that some of the machinery seemed to have been designed to be operated by “a dwarf with three arms”. He worked shifts- Earlies, Lates and his least favourite Nights. As children, I remember Mum kept us very quiet around the house when he was on Nights; then we would help mum bring him tea in bed around 2 in the afternoon.
PAUL
Dad was full of stories garnered from his workmates- giving some names an almost legendary status at home – Charlie Broyd, Bernie Bonass and especially West Thurrock’s answer to Socrates, Joe Cloherty. After being retired for 35 years, in the last few months of his life, Dad started to have dreams about being back at work, having to take readings and start up the machinery – he’d ask us to have a look at what the dials said on that panel on the wall – the sort of workplace anxiety dreams, which you get if you are conscientious and care about what you do and the people you work with.
Some of his friends in the air force had been very much on the political left, and that influenced him – and by extension us. He read the Guardian – thoroughly – every day. Has been known to wear sandals, and sometoimes, eat Muesli. He always voted Labour and leaned towards the Lefter side of the Labour coalition. But this wasn’t unthinking tribalism. During the General Election last year there was a knock on the door. When I answered it there was a brisk and efficient Labour canvas team working its way down the road. I said “My Mum and Dad have voted Labour in every General Election since 1951, and I don’t suppose they atre going to chnage now”, then gave him an earful at the Party leadership’s move to the Right. When I treported this conversation back to Mum and Dad, Dad said “Hmmm. Would you disown me if I voted Green?”
He always took an interest, always listened to people and was prepared to rub along when views differed, usually finding humour in a situation, or a connection to the underlying humanity that he always looked for – and, because he was looking for it, found.
CHRIS
When Dad died I put a post on Facebook to inform family and friends and I was struck by how many of my old friends posted comments using very similar language; about how welcoming Dad was and how he made them feel welcome whenever they visited. It never occurred to me until then how true this was and what it meant- that it meant so much, how Dad made people feel.
He was a man who was comfortable with himself and with others and he enjoyed being with others. He was in touch with his emotions and they were positive and warm. We never knew anger growing up, not even when we nearly burnt the kitchen down, trying to surprise Mum and Dad by making them breakfast in bed one time. Anger was reserved for politics or disrespectful service in shops perhaps.
PAUL
He was not in any way a broad brush, slapdash sort of person; witness the back garden at 112 for the immaculate balance of colours, shapes and timing, or his DIY, or any of his paintings, or the model aircraft he made – where he wouldn’t just produce a generic World War 1 aircraft out of the box. He’d research a particular aircraft and paint the model to match it exactly and rig it with tiny bits of cotton to stand in for the wires that supported the struts on the wings. These were not supplied by Airfix.
This is his painting hat, which he wore for fun to help get in a creative frame of mind; because if you are going to do magic things with paintbrushes, it helps to have a magic hat. It has badges…aircraft museum, World Wildlife Fund and the National Trust, a CND peace badge, Homer Simpson, an Eddie Stobart spotters club – because when you’re driving long distances, games and rituals keep you sane – Tottenham Hotspur – because football, as we know, is about art…and suffering and, just occasionally, joy, and two red nose day badges from the late 90s when the kids were little and selling them; which I initially mistook for blood donor badges – as he gave many an armful over the years.
CHRIS
He built a wonderfully long and great life with Mum that was based on respect and love; from dinner dances with friends (we’ve forgotten to mention what a great dancer he was!) and holidays, concerts, and days out to memorable Christmases and Birthdays. He was at the centre of things. Not in any dominating way, but as the catalyst of good feelings. Effortless and understated.
Dad had no faith but I would describe him as a soulful man. On my Facebook post I described him as a beautiful man in every way. And he was. I could not imagine a better father, or role model; without trying -just by being him-he taught us how to be a respectful, kind and to aspire to be a decent human being in all we did.
He will be greatly missed by all who knew him and loved him.
* The photo at the precinct entrance is wrongly captioned as Orsett Road in 1955. As Dad was demobbed by 1950, this is wrong.
Urban ramblings 