Man of the People

This is a painting of my grandfather (Albert Carl Liley) in our garden in Wellingborough when he was around 75 years old. If ever there was a man of the people, it was him. Never one to mince his words and generally always getting the wrong end of the stick in arguments, he got through life by trying to enjoy pretty much every minute of it.

This was a man who had seen it all. He had flown in a biplane as a 'mapper' of German trenches in the First World War. Been gassed. Returned home to spend most of his adult life on a 'shop' floor in Loughborough, Leicestershire, mending engines for the railway. In the Second World War he became an ARP warden. And then, when all that was over, he spent the rest of his life travelling around the Mediterranean in cruise ships his wife, Lily, before moving to Northamptonshire where the two of them lived the remainder of their days with my mother and father ( and my brother and I). He eventually died one evening following a laughing fit while watching The Paul Daniels Magic Show.

He had a good life, all in all, and if there was anyone who comes close to the old saying that all you need for happiness in life is to mess around in your garden, then he was the man.

He disliked politicians, hated salesmen and was wary of bank managers. Life had taught him to be suspicious of pretty much everyone else. In fact, both Lily and he would carry all their most precious things (bank books, jewellery, passports) etc) around with them in a large bag whenever they went out.

In his later days, he spent his time inventing garden implements and helping out at a home for disabled children in a nearby village.

I rather think he was one of a kind - stubborn, gentle, fiercely British and now immortalised in the painting above, by my father, Charles Liley.

It is probably true that events shaped his character, but I think that there are very few people alive today with the same ideals and contentment that he had. He was not materialistic, had simple wants and needs and loved more than anything, to sit in his garden reading 'The Lord of the Rings' for the fifth or sixth time, while drinking a glass of water 'all the way from the crystal sea'.