It seemed to me in the Autumn of 1985 that I was perhaps the bravest woman in East Kent. Oliver had given me the typescript of his new pamphlet for my “comments and corrections”. Can you imagine telling such an accomplished writer that his syntax was sometimes dodgy and his punctuation hilarious? In his eyes I read: “For God’s sake why did I ask her?” and “When is she going to crawl back into her cheese?” All he actually said was “Thank you my darling. I’ll look at it all very carefully.” He accepted about 80% of my corrections and comments, and thus set the pattern of our working together for the rest of his life. He wrote; I edited. Sometimes I wrote, but rarely showed him my text until after publication - it made for a more peaceful existence that way.
Oliver was an inventor with frugal habits. From various bits of old wood, some lengths of strong elastic, a couple of doorknobs and the battery from his power-drill he made an auxiliary motor for my manual wheelchair. It had been test driven with a sack of bricks for a passenger but now it was my turn. He pushed me down the long hill to Louisa Bay where we sat and admired the white lace surf rolling up the beach until it was time to go home for tea. Half way up the hill I smelled burning and saw tiny flames escaping from underneath my seat. I leaped out of the chair and told Oliver in succinct and palpably unladylike language exactly what I thought of him and all other mad inventors. He did not seem too bothered about me, but he was quite put out by the demise of his battery.
A few weeks before Oliver died we talked about the modest funeral he wanted and the Broadstairs party I hoped to organise for his many friends. “Well,” he said, “ if you want to do that as well as the Funereals, my darling, by all means do so. But, I don’t expect that many people will bother to come.” Last April at the Pavilion on the Sands right beside the sea he loved so much I gave his big party, and very many people bothered to come. His family, his friends, colleagues from the BFI and Television, Richard the Gas and Pete the Shoes, Mandy who runs the Ramsgate Cat Charity of which Bagpuss is a Patron, Graham from the Romanian Hospice where Bagpuss with a little help from the brickies built the Children’s Wing, some of the wonderful ladies who cared for him during the last months of his life - they and a multitude of others were all there. So for once, dearest Oliver, you were wrong, and all of us who loved you and who will always love your work were glad about that.
I go down sometimes to the edge of the beach where last May I left Oliver’s ashes. I look at the golden carpet the sun unrolls across the water stretching from my feet into the infinite distance of the horizon where the sea at last took him, and I smile at my memories of that once-upon-a-time-giant of a man, vast of intellect, magnificent in spirit, so loving in heart.
As I sit there I imagine that, if there is indeed a Heaven, I can in my mind’s eye see the Management suffering a certain degree of disquietude. Challenged by Gabriel, Oliver points to the sack of feathers he has been collecting since the last seraphic moult and makes it quite clear that he, Oliver, will have no need for the services of the celestial wing-makers. He will design and make his own set of re-cycled wings, thank you very much. Meanwhile, if the Archangel will please excuse him, he has needles to make and a template to cut. Gabriel sighs and shrugs, carefully folds his magnificently tailored pinions, and exits stage left. It always takes a while to get to grips with real genius.
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