Roger , a Yorkshireman in every respect, was a detective for about 25 years and seemingly never became cynical or hard hearted.. He had, what we subsequently learned, was a typical Yorkshire sense of humour and we gloried in it. He did much more for us than we ever did for him. Catherine did accompany him on a couple of shopping trips - once when he wanted to buy a new pump for his boat and once to buy decking glue - to make sure he was getting what he wanted. His French speaking skills couldn’t cope with the technical language. (Mind you, C had to check a few terms in her dictionary as well!)
We had a leaking tap in one of the bathrooms. It was a dog of a thing to work on: almost inaccessible and the spanners wouldn’t fit into the confined space. We had several goes at it and in the end did the girlie thing and put a drip tray under it. After all it was an intermittent leak! The day before we left for the south of France, for no reason, the drip turned into something a lot more serious, about a litre a day. We knew the drip tray would be inadequate while we were away so we turned off the water pump, emptied the pipes and left for Nice knowing we would have to deal with it when we got back. Indeed when we got back we contorted ourselves and used all our strength in failed attempts to undo what we believed to be the offending connection. Enter Roger, who assured us such problems were mechanical not physical. We gladly relinquished this problem to one so knowledgeable. Many hours and a lot of exclamations later, Roger disentangled himself from the bowels of our hand basin with the problem solved, permanently as we now know. When Jeanette said to him, ‘was it mechanical or physical?’ He responded ‘it required brute strength and ignorance’. “oh well’, said Jeanette, ‘no wonder Catherine and I couldn’t solve the problem!’
True to his Yorkshire humour, Roger just gave a rueful grin. He knew we were just joking but he also knew it was too good an opening not to respond to!
Earlier we recounted how it took us five days to do the one and a half day journey from St Jean de Losne to Dijon. Such is the network of friendship we enjoy, that everyone knew Catherine had been laid low with a bad back. On our final run into Dijon, we had stopped for a lunch break on the side of the canal. (locks close between noon and 1pm) As it happened, Roger was driving to Dijon to pick up a friend from the railway station, he saw our boat, did a u-turn and came back to check we were ok, which we were. We gave him a cuppa, and had a good old natter, it was ssooo good to see him. Jeanette mentioned that the head had fallen off the mallet when Catherine was driving in a spike when we moored up for lunch. This long suffering friend took the offending mallet and a hammer and put it all together for us. Jeanette promised him that the next time she saw him she WOULD NOT tell him our problems otherwise he would avoid coming to see us. Roger accidentally left his packet of smokes on our boat. We put them safely on our bookshelf ready to return to him. We exchanged text messages en route over the following weeks and had a good idea where each other was.
Unbelievably now, we cannot have that chat and tell him about a problem we need help with, (even though we promised not to) and we cannot give him back his forgotten smokes. It is hard to comprehend that the death of someone we knew for such a short time has had such an impact on us. Roger was a gentleman and friend it was a true privilege to know. Our hearts go out to Chris. To have to cope with a sudden death on a canal in a foreign country would be extremely difficult and it is going to be at least a day before close family can be with Chris, we know her son is on his way.
Kia kaha, Chris.
Roger and Chis enjoying a drink with Jeanette in Dole (where they took us on a shopping mission)
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