Ron Fowler
Tidy St resident
At about
8.30pm on 25th June 2010 a group of people gathered on the pavement in Tidy
Street and stayed there until the early hours of the morning. On many occasions
during that time glasses were raised in unison and tilted towards the blank,
unlit windows of the house opposite. We were holding a spontaneous wake
following the funeral of our friend and neighbour, Ron Fowler.
He worked for the Gas Board
Ron was
one of four sons born and raised in Brighton, growing up near the Lewes Road.
After school he joined the Gas Board and remained there until taking a
much enjoyed early retirement. He walked, as he often said, ‘thousands of
miles’ over town in his work, enjoying his relationships with customers for
whom time spent over a cup of tea was a valued part of the service.
A Trade Union Health & Safety representative
He
retained strong memories of the privations, social hierarchies and inequalities
of the post-war period, and perhaps because of this his political sympathies
lay with those he saw as on the side of ordinary people. Just recently he
declared New Labour’s Winter Fuel Heating Allowance ‘marvelous’, contrasting it
with the precisely remembered policies of ‘… that other lot, they’d let you
freeze to death’. He worked hard but non-confrontationally as trade union
Health and Safety rep for 28 years, running successful campaigns against unsafe
working practices and recalling with particular pride how his intervention had
saved the job of a ‘family man’ who had committed a sackable offence. In the
1950s he had been impressed at the improvement in the family home when – at
last - electric lighting replaced gas, and he maintained an open-minded
enthusiasm for other modern technological advances, whether mobile phones, the
internet or the International Space Station passing in the sky.
Ron loved to cycle
He loved
his bicycle and had been known to cycle to Crawley and back; more than that, he
actively disliked the damage car culture did to communities and sociability and
so participated enthusiastically in the street parties we held from 2007. One
of our favourite stories about Ron was of the time he won a car in a casino
tournament and stubbornly refused to be deferentially impressed by it,
insisting instead on his right to an appropriate cash equivalent.
A man of contradictions
Ron was
in many ways a man of contradictions: a smart and stylish dresser, a
connoisseur of quality but at low cost; a sociable being who was happy in his
own company; someone who hardly drank but loved to party; an often guarded,
cautious personality who yet thrilled to the uncertain outcomes of the bets he
placed on the horses and at the casino. He was ‘single’, a ‘bachelor’: but marriage,
of course, charts only one of the many paths of love that the human heart can
follow. Ron became the devoted friend of two older women residents in Tidy
Street, looking after them through an old age that was undoubtedly happier,
healthier, longer lasting and more secure for his attention and care.
An active outgoing life
After
their deaths he inherited their house, which enabled him to leave the basement
he rented at 34 Tidy Street – a space so damp, he related, that unworn clothes
rapidly grew mildew and his electric blanket had to be left permanently on. No
20 became the home he called his ‘church’, on which he lavished care, attention
and DIY skills: his was one of the most frequently polished brass door knockers
in the street. From this more secure base his active, outgoing life continued:
often from across the street I would see him depart, dressed up to the hilt,
and later hear the coming and going of a taxi in the early hours of the
morning, which only deepened my intrigue about the (to me) mysterious world of
Brighton’s casinos.
Resolutely independent
Ron was
resolutely independent: at his funeral a former colleague related how he dug
out the cellar of his house and cleared up the sewage that then twice flooded
it, all on his own: he sought advice as to the solution, but not assistance.
Only last year he single-handedly built a summer house in his garden. Perhaps
his most satisfying achievement was to become a self-taught artist: he worked
in acrylics, developing his craft late into the night in the cellar that became
his studio. Occasionally he invited others into his house to view
the paintings lining every wall: one night he knocked at our door to share the
excitement of finally ‘getting’ just the expression he wanted on a portrait.
All of his pictures were meaningful, but perhaps particularly those of deceased
family and friends, intended for their relatives as a gesture of honour and
consolation.
A distinctive and irreplaceable individual
His
diagnosis of lung cancer came too early for a man with so much to do and live
for; one bittersweet consolation was that it led Ron to seek out company more
actively than before so that many of us came to know him better. Perhaps
it brought out the best in all his neighbours too, by giving us a chance to
care: providing lifts to and from hospital appointments, fetching
prescriptions, visiting him in hospital, sending cards, providing haircuts,
inviting him to or bringing round meals including a Christmas feast over which
he rhapsodized, or spending hours, when he locked himself out one winter night,
working out how to get back into the house without causing any damage. So it
felt entirely fitting that we should then come together in the street where he
belonged and had been happy, to celebrate but also to mourn the loss of a
distinctive and irreplaceable individual.
By Sara Bragg
[Previously
published in the North Laine Runner, No 206, September/October 2010]