Last summer was a sad one for us.  While we were in France a couple of good friends and an acquaintance died within the space of three months.  Aileen and Charlie received send-offs that marked their wide range of friends and family and the high regard in which they were held.  The third, Chris, died a lonely death and, eight months after he died, his body still lies in the morgue unclaimed by any of his children.

Chris wasn’t the most savoury of characters.  He was known by our crowd as Crisputin as a rather less than subtle reference to how filthy he was.  Aileen immortalised him in one of her distinctive pen-and-watercolour portraits.

The little thumbnail here gives you some idea, perhaps, of just how dirty Chris was.  It was memorable.  But Chris had a heart of gold and he was known as the “patron saint of the ladies of the night” of Scatliffe Alley, Road Town.  He would do anything for them.  Drive them anywhere, at any time.  He adored them.  I learned very quickly to decline the offer to view the pictures in his camera – they were an education to say the least! I have to be honest and say that he made my flesh crawl, but I’m sure that I do the same for others.

But I do find the fact that all those who he helped over the years and his children haven’t done that most basic of courtesies for Chris and taken care of his remains.   I guess that that’s one of the oddities and unexpected consequences of life in the islands, thousands of miles away from your family.  It is unutterably sad, and an awful reflection of our society.  I have to wonder how many more months he will take up space in the freezer before the health authorities decide that they must inter his body somewhere.

To add a further layer of callousness, someone deliberately set his pretty little boat adrift last week.  I say deliberately because, although no-one saw it happen, the way the wind was blowing, it’s impossible for his boat to have made it out of the slip in which it was berthed without human intervention, the wind blew her ashore.  I imagine that the dock’s owners got tired of no-one paying dockage for her.  So, for a week now she has been aground outside our window.

A poignant reminder of Chris, and the uncertainties of life.