To Whom it May Concern
I write as directed by the current Secretary of the Ipswich
Branch of the WRVS concerning a distinctly sensitive matter.
The sum will take a
brief while to explain but I hope you can bear with me in explaining the matter
of what in general terms is a belated request for references following a
lengthy Leave of Absence from seeking Employment around the time of my own
Father's death at the end of 2008. There is a lot of talk in the Media about
standards in the NHS generally, as well as in particular on the subject of Care
for the Elderly so it is quite important to get this sort of intelligence
right.
Between approximately
late in 1996 and late in 2001 I undertook to provide roughly two days a week
voluntary assistance to the Meals on Wheels Service which was then sited at
I do in general seek
to quest after references but there were some distressing circumstances
attached to the fact of my moving from the Flat I had lived in for approaching
a decade by the end of 2001 which was the last time I worked for the
Organisation. These tend to centre on what I have to call the observable fact
of my Father having been in fact in the process of laundering allegations of
sexual/social misdemeanour when he returned to the Country in the latter
nineties. My long term dissatisfaction with Legal Assistance I had been given
derived from the fact of my having become involved in a domestic dispute with a
putative Lodger in 1984; partly as the result of which he had been robbed of
some musical equipment which I still largely know nothing about and for which I
was pursued for Burglary. I had pawned or sold depending on one's precise view
a couple of minor items of his, he having been resident for several months
without any payment being made and my having received only vague instructions
from my Father that I should take over that Flat. He had gone for a planned
three week trip, didn't return at all for over five years and the matter of
organising some approapriate response hd become imperative. It didn't really become clear that
his reasons for being to say the least consistently vague and unhelpful were to
do with such allegations, and in the months and years between 2002 and his
death it became apparent to me these were in fact longstanding and more
numerous than I had previously realised: what is of supposing that many
realised this a long time before I did.
My Father with who I
had shared that Flat for a couple of years on and off, had disappeared in
November of '83 with a Thai Woman of unfortunate background whom he had married
under circumstances which were both curious and unceremonious. For example
their brief relationship had been scarred by violent incidents during one of
which she had in fact stabbed him.
At some point during
I believe it was the latter part of '98 my Father returned to the Country with
another Son of fifteen years.
I had visited them
twice in the intervening period when they hadn't seemed that happy and my
Father had vouchsafed nothing much understandable. I was in a position after
five years or more of working at a serious sort of Household to gift them
somewhere to stay for the short term my being it seemed at the time congenially
able to care for my Father, and gift my half brother everything that I had
tragically lacked at his age. I thought they would be happy enough to forget
about the world they had left behind given what had taken place there when I
visited.
The half brother
immediately became an intolerable nuisance being amongst other things
repeatedly accused of carrying out sex attacks on a neighbour's daughter who
attended the same School. A highly destructive series of events ensued during
which the younger half brother Jack became increasingly seriously delinquent
throughout the following three years or more. I was rather shocked when it
began having imagined that I had escaped the unpleasant memories of my
childhood which it evoked. After a lengthy stay at the Flat I had lived in from
'93 they had after various make do and mend arrangements eventually been
granted a Two Bedroomed Flat on the other side of
Town.
The Police seemed to
be underestimating the nuisance and hazard of this situation and coping with
this was made even more difficult at the time a Cousin of my Father also came
to stay sometime during 1999 I think it was, having burned down his House and
gone bankrupt. Upon his arrival I immediately pronounced that he had some
serious nervous disorder which the Doctors took over a year to diagnose as
deadly Motor Neurone Disease after maintaining for some time that he was merely
enduring Premature Dementia which I didn't think fitted the symptoms. The fact
that he died very shortly thereafter underlines I suppose that I had a lot of
relevant Education on the subject of Medicine and might be worthy of being
thought of as less than a complete amateur in fields related to care for the
Elderly which as everyone knows is an increasingly pressing problem in our
Society. The fact I had for example stuck to two days weekly or so rather than
end up complaining about having time taken up with arguably demanding work, may
perhaps play a minor role in the delay for contacting anyone about the matter
of a belated enquiry.
The fact is when
trouble blew up that was directed at me myself I did ask a Solicitor to contact
the Office in 2002 but by then the requisite charge had been dropped and she
declined the request to be of what she called "further assistance,"
when the fact was that she had been of less than none.
What had happened was
that I had with a friend's assistance managed to get my half brother on a Plane
back to his Relatives with
a fake cheque for monies he had been demanding. When my Landlord
decided he wanted the Flat I had lived in for almost a decade vacated he
vouchsafed no obvious explanation despite the fact that problematic guests had
gone, and I had with immense difficulty managed to discharge general social and
moral obligations toward family. I feel at this point that the larger part of
this must
have been known to various people I had been involved in
with work at the WRVS at the time, remembering as I do the Cooks one of who was
a bespectacled Joyce and of who the present Secretary I believe it may have
been, has said that she has unfortunately been unwell and in a Home herself. Of
two ladies in the Office Beryl the elder had a large blonde bespectacled
assistant called Sue I think it may have been. It will probably still be
largely recalled by most of these individuals as well as perhaps one or two of
the Drivers such as an elderly Bill Waspe (with an e
I think) my regular Driver: I can't quite remember the name of Joyce's
Assistant Cook.
It may be further
recalled that following the death of my Father's Cousin which had occasioned
numerous personal difficulties during the course of a misunderstood decline, I
had decided to move in with my Father after working at the Post Office over the
Winter of 2001-2. It was becoming obvious that his own health was seriously
awry and that as I told him he needed to calm down take proper care of himself and avoid stress if he was to live for more than
another half a decade.
That much may
hopefully be recalled by one or two individuals and perhaps such odd details as
that I had only agreed to move in with him on the basis that his other Son made
no return in the foreseeable future, and only then by careful agreement
obviously conditional on behavioural considerations.
The place needed a
lot of work to make it comfortable as my Father had among other things been
plagued by criminal attentions from vandals and acquaintances of my half
brother amongst an impressive litany of wrongdoing, as well as a number of
mobility issues, all of which had been carried out in view of various Officials
associated with their Welfare. I was still occupied with it when my Father
returned from what turned out to be his last trip to the
So other factors in
this long delay of communication include that I was completely devastated by the consequences
relative to resources of time and expense, both my aged Motorcycles being
stolen among a catalogue of woes. My genuine poverty would be all too well
instanced by the fact which may likely be recalled of my not having been able
to acquire a Licence for such an vehicle until the late nineties when I was
well into my thirties. In the first instance I had to spend many months by one
person standards dragging a substantial sized household through two hastily
acquired and unsuitable Flats with little assistance but that of my ageing
Mother and finding myself enviously eying the accommodation of Iraqi refugees.
I certainly hadn't forgotten about the work I had done by the time I had
recovered most of my property at the Nacton Road
Address where I remained until a year after my Father's death. Perhaps the most
striking reasons for any delay in seeking to make some official contact was
that the place was appalling. Three single pane windows were all that were
between myself and one of the busiest Roads in the Borough, one of the busiest
Bookmakers in Town was below and its deafening Aircon units made it impossible to open windows at the
rear. It is difficult to exaggerate the depression and personal upset that I
felt given what enormous well intentioned endeavour I had provided in various
ways in previous years.
I moved to my current
address in early 2010 where practical difficulties and other fresh if
relatively minor difficulties with legal issues and legal representation, was
followed by others with my GP and have since monopolised an awful lot of
attention. The latter dialogue has inevitable led round to what people I did
work with for several years might recall. My Father did also do some driving
for them once he returned from the
So apart from the
remark that I simply was utterly poleaxed by the fact
of what happened in 2002 and hardly recovered my wits in the badly designed
Flat where I was dumped, as I waited for his inevitable acquisition of, and
expiry from Lung Cancer exactly as I had told him, certain misapprehensions
seem to have arisen with Doctors as I had asked to be put on the sick list in
2002. I didn't take much notice of what specific diagnosis they had made at the
time as it seemed to me that the only obvious thing about it was that I should
have been granted that as a School Leaver, when a distinctly hasty and
questionable looking recent marriage to the Daughter of a Onetime Magistrate
who also lived in the neighbourhood of the Cumberland St Office was dissolved:
I did seek to make some issue out of this at the time but the fact was as I say
that I did not even get halfway toward piecing back together the Household I'd
had at the end of 2001 until last year and no other long term issues had been
resolved or have been resolved.
It must have been
partly anticipated by co-workers that such testimony as I do in fact seek was
and indeed would be appropriate and deserved. I think Beryl who was more or
less my Father's age and who probably had more insight than others into
allegations that his family background was of some unusual significance in the
latter 1930's, may have been too concerned to overlook his culpable role in the
appalling series of events that followed him: this may not be entirely
unconnected to the fact that my Head of Year at School locally was a wartime
refugee whose real name was Heinkel. For instance she
had no idea that he and some of the odd characters he had been making
arrangements with during his years in the far east had hardly less than stolen
the only pitiable windfalls I had since he abandoned the country in 1983. The
remark that I owed him a sum of approaching £300 at the time may also be likely
to have been wrongly interpreted. Given what had recently occurred it was not
in fact a matter of any significance. I had done all sorts of things for him
without asking for a penny whilst his other Son peevishly demanded all sorts of
odds and ends including frequent Plane tickets. He had also rather
unceremoniously seized what there was to be had from our deceased Cousin John
French's property and outstanding welfare cheques prior to disappearing on his
final trip to the far east: this was a somewhat larger
sum and I had been much more inconvenienced by the fact of his disturbing
demise than anyone else.
I am still in some
ways at something of a loss to know exactly what to do. This is not least in
view of the fact that despite some effective propaganda to the effect that
problem families are mollycoddled with all sorts of Legal Advice and
Representation, I have not been able to find any evidence of it at all in over
three decades of questing.
The important thing
is that to my mind most of those I had worked with would readily agree that he
had deliberately arranged all this situation under Blackmail threats from his
Wife's family and it would help if I could contact any or all of these with a view
to obtaining their opinions. The Director at the time was a dark haired
bespectacled Gentleman, he would likely be the most
appropriate person to ask about references and may be anticipating some such
enquiry from me though Sue in the Office if I have recalled her name correctly
probably knew me slightly better.
In the short term I
could really do with some notification of such testimony being passed to my
current GP. What is for instance unfortunately of the remark that several
parties have had clear motivation for contriving undeservedly negative
portrayals of myself and have misled the Doctor's Surgery in a quite
professional manner. My Mother's marriage and the manner in which my sole
paternal Aunt came into possession of the only family property seem closely
related to the fact of such alleged deception. I enclose copies of two letters
I sent to the new local Office last year following which I made a personal
visit and had a lengthy discussion the upshot of which was that I should write
to Head Office.
Yours Sincerely