Clive Arthur <
cl...@nowaytoday.co.uk> writes:
> On 23/11/2023 12:05, Serena Blanchflower wrote:
>> Although I have a feeling that it may be superseded by the Miles (or
>> possibly, Bruce) storyline, as Rob's family want control of the only
>> Titchener grandchild.
>
> In the admittedly unlikely event that Rob died intestate, Jack would
> get the lot, whatever that is, I think.
>
> There's certainly room for mischief-making from beyond the grave.
I only discovered a couple of years ago that my father died intestate in
1977 – nobody ever said anything about it and I assumed (since I'd seen
an earlier, unwitnessed, draft of a will) that he had left everything to
my mother. It surprised me because for one thing the value of his estate
was very small considering what he had been earning in Canada, where
he'd gone with his employers for two years not long before and taken Mum
with him, and the value of the house in Reading. Also that he'd done a
lot of sorting of other financial and other affairs in consultation with
my sister and her husband, but not a word to me. And thinking, in
retrospect, not only that sister and hubby were able to put down a deposit on a
house within months of his demise, but that the great rift between
sister and Mum happened round about the same time [1]. I will now never know
what that was about since Mum is dead and sister thoroughly estranged.
I'm pretty sure that a deal was done between my father and my
sister/broil before they went to Canada. For one thing, part of the
arrangement was that the family house in Welwyn GC was put up for
renting out without any consultation with me – it was presented to me as
a fait accompli – leaving me with nowhere to go to in the university
vacations. I know I could have stayed in Liverpool on my own in a damp
student flat with the students union providing a skeleton service, but I
didn't think that was fair – would you? Some kind of arrangement was
made for me to stay with sis/broil in their council house but since sis
made it abundantly clear that I was there under sufferance (for one
thing I was expected to take my evening meal early with toddler-nepling
and then make myself scarce for the evening I very strongly suspect that
this arrangement was bought. Probably this involved the "gratuitous"
gift of a big Grundig radio-cassette player (a big deal in 1974) but
probably a great deal more than that. Incidentally, they were able to
get a council house because Welwyn GC ran one of those ghastly schemes
to keep people with dusky skins out by limiting council houses to those
with one or both sets of parents already living in one and broil's
parents lived in one. I do remember in my A-level year having to sleep
on the sofa so that they could get more "points" by claiming we were
"overcrowded" – my bedroom having been commandeered for nepling,
naturally.
When my father died my partner and I were living in a tiny rented attic
flat in Hull. We didn't qualify for a council house anywhere and got sod
all help from my parents!
Here endeth this rant.
Rosie
[1] Not long before Mum's mind began to disintegrate, she told me that
the roots of the rift were in August 1968 when, once again due to Dad
working abroad, his family were given a two week holiday in
Amsterdam. This didn't cover broil since they weren't married yet but it
seems my sister had demanded that he come too, so Dad paid for him but
not for a separate room for him (he shared mine, which clearly satisfied
neither of us, and parents were too prissy to let him share with
sis). Anyway there came a day towards the end of the holiday when things
had obviously been said either before or after breakfast when I was out
of the way. The plan was to go to Zandvoort for the day, but sis was
like a wet Monday morning (it was Friday, and I think it may have been
sunny) on the train. The only memory of Zandvoort I have (apart from
walking uphill from the station to the seafront) is of me (just turned
14) standing near the sea wall not knowing where to put myself as
broil-to-be (21 I think, I've never been quite sure to be honest)
shouted angrily at Mum, presumably about how badly she treated her elder
daughter. I didn't catch what was being said, I didn't want to know
then, but I have a theory: sis (aged 19) wanted to go off with broil to
do their own thing but mum had told her no because she didn't want me to
be unhappily trailing after mum and dad on h[is|er] own. The funny thing
is that had she been open with me I'd probably have agreed with sis but
she wasn't, so all I got was the sense that I wanted to be anywhere but
there. And even now I can't imagine in a million years why a young man
would want to shout so angrily at his girlfriend's mother. I wouldn't
have dreamed of it, would you?