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Steve Watkins

Steve Watkins

Eulogy, written and read by Neil Watkins: Christopher Kenneth Watkins was born on the 27th of April 1957. His mother Anne and his father Ken at the time lived with his mums parents. They later moved to Old Marston in Oxford. 1 year after dad his sister Lianne was born and 5 years later another sister Nicky. Their father ken brought them up in a very old school manner and for the most part they were fairly terrified of him. This brought them close together and created the foundation for the kind of relationship that would last a lifetime and always be supportive to the very end. Being brought up in the 60s where money was tight the 3 of them learned to make their own fun largely just playing in nature. I think this created a certain softness in my dad being the eldest son with 2 younger sisters to protect. He always seemed to be very gentle and kind around women and have a great understanding of the female mind. He was very intelligent and would likely have done well in school. But at the time that exams came up he had been working with his father felt roofing and tripped, covering himself in hot tar. He was admitted to hospital and never ended up sitting his exams. He was always very creative and at that point in his life was focussed on drawing and painting. But he had a dream to become a chef. Unfortunately that never came to pass as he missed his exams and he went with the flow and followed in his fathers footsteps to become a felt roofer. He did this for a while in his teenage years. But then he was offered a job elsewhere learning carpentry so he took it up. It was at this time that he met my mum Shirley as he was lodging in Risborough where she lived. His mode of transport then was a motor bike, which I’m given to believe spent most of its time on its side. He pursued carpentry for a few years. But then decided to go back to felt roofing and started his own business. The business was doing well and so he and my mum bought a house in park street in Thame. During which time Steve was born and then 2 years later I followed. 2 years after that Luke was born. They were doing so well that they sold the house and bought another one in Churchill crescent in Thame. Back in the 80’s before health and safety you could wear whatever you wanted to work. So my dad as a joke started wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat to work. Quite literally the most dangerous footwear you could find to climb ladders all day. But he persevered with that for many years and became known as the cowboy builder. He thought that was hilarious. My dad in his early days was hardcore. He told me about this one story where he was driving home from work on the M40 in a van. In those days windscreens didn’t have plastic in the glass to reduce shatter. It was mid winter and snowing outside. Another car pinged a stone up into the window. It chipped it. 2 minutes later the entire windscreen disintegrated in his face. He was driving along at 70 with snow blasting in his face. But instead of pulling over like a normal person, he just pushed through drove home. He reckoned he wasn’t far from frostbite in his hands. Another time someone got a flat tire on their car but they didn’t have a jack. So he picked one end up and held it while they changed the tyre. In his later years he told me that him and Pete Rathbone back then used to drop acid and then reroof buildings 3 floors up tripping their nuts off….. Wearing those same cowboy boots. That to me is unfathomably militant. Once he mashed his finger with a hammer. Left it a few days and he thought it felt like pressure was building up inside it. So he made my mum get one of those manual drills and drill through the nail to release the pressure. She attested to that fact that he was right and it did squirt enough to hit the ceiling. He still didnt go to the hospital though, that was a good enough fix for him. On his days off he used to play subbuteo with us. But the thing with my dad that I have now inherited is that he was never gonna give anyone a chance to win. He would just beat everyone and feel good about it no matter what their handicap. At the time I remember thinking that it felt unfair. But it’s took me many years to realise that in fact it bred a drive to win and to succeed due to not really enjoying the feeling of being beaten all time. A few years later his father joined him as a partner in the business and they took on a huge contract, outlaid everything they had on materials and then were never payed by the customer as the company had folded. This happened during the recession in the late 80’s and it crippled dads company causing him to lose the house. So then we moved to Didcot and my Dad found work in Germany for a major roofing company. He would be away for 3 months at a time and only be back for a few weeks in between. So we didn’t see much of him but he loved the adventure of being in a different country and was earning good money. When he was back he used to hog our Sega mega drive rinsing the motorbike game super hang on for days on end. He’d nailed every little intricacy of the game engine and used to sit there trying to teach us how it worked. We’d be listening but really thinking….. can’t I just have go? We eventually moved back to Thame and a few years later dad began to develop problems with his back. He became unable to continue physical work and so he and my mum started work together for a company called Kleeneze. Kleeneze was like the 90’s version of Amazon before the internet had properly taken off. They worked very hard and for long hours for many years and did OK. But as the internet began to take off it made companies like that obsolete. Then in 1995 we moved here to this house. My parents both absolutely loved this house. They felt like they finally lived somewhere that felt like home. My dad tried several jobs after moving here and every time his back would go out and cause him to be stuck laying down for weeks. This eventually caused him to give up trying and he registered as disabled. At this point it seemed that my dad had had so many knocks in his life that it had taken the wind out of his sails. He lacked direction in his life and spent a good few years loosing time to computer games. He had been a stoner since the age of 12 and he decided that there was nothing he knew more about than weed. The system had failed him and so he said fuck the system. He started knocking out and began making many friends. He loved it. He loved meeting new people, he loved being the centre of attention, he and my mum both loved playing agony aunt to the hundreds of people that came through this door. He was once again full of life. He had found a new purpose. To just have a good old time and make sure everyone else was doing the same. At around this time my dad became the main character in my favourite memory of my 37 years. I used to share a bedroom with Steve. Our heads near each other and with my bed situated that if I opened my eyes from the position I slept I could see the door and also my brother. One night my dad went over to the royal oak across the road. Got absolutely smashed. Came home and went to bed. 3Am BANG, the light comes on. My eyes open to see dad standing naked in the doorway. I’m confused but intrigued. He staggers towards me. Turns to face my brother and starts to unload urine onto him. I’m doing nothing to stop this. I already cant see for the tears in my eyes and I’m struggling to breathe. You know if you start pouring water on the grass. At first its quiet, but the more you pour, the more collects in the space and it gets louder and more splashy. My dads peeing into the space between Steve’s legs and its collecting and its splashing and I’m fucking delighted. My bros eyes open. He rubs them. He rubs them again. Then with a wobble in his voice and a frown on his face he says “Dad…your…………..Pissing on me?”. Dad stops, his eyes open. He looks down at Steve and reviews the situation. Then says “Am I? Sorry boy” Closes his eyes and carries on with the same flow rate. Now Steve’s on the move, his arms are flapping about and he’s making a lot of noise. My dad, making sounds of contentment pushes every last squirt out and with my bro still trying to figure out what to do, calmly shakes himself dry and wonders back to bed happy with his work. I did not sleep again that night, I have never been so happy. The memories of my teenage life were coming home from school to a house full of my mates there to see my parents. This house became an open house and a social hub for everyone I knew. Dad had an absolute acceptance of us 3 boys too, to just grow up and go in whatever direction we chose. He let us have mad parties and just joined in with it. The thing with this kind of parenting approach is that it builds trust and you end up being able to have a more honest relationship as there is nothing to hide. In any day there was often a chess game in play here or a poker table with 6 people round it. My dad was a master of both and old or young he loved nothing more than to give people a beating at either. Dad didn’t judge people, he accepted people with all their flaws. He would try to guide them, but he wouldn’t be pushy. From the time we were young children there was often someone staying in our house cos they had nowhere to go. He never turned down a person in need and he would often be screwing himself over to do so. You would struggle to find someone who has a bad word to say about dad. I think we can all agree on a time in our lives where we consider the depth of a point but the words don’t release fast enough as we procrastinate the perfection of articulation and say nothing instead. Ideas kept in that are fully considered internally but timing doesn’t allow their release. This is how my dad lived. What he released was merely a fraction of the great depth that was considered beneath. The cogs were turning beyond what the average mind could imagine and yet he often remained silent. Dad had a lot of time on his hands and loved to write. He was an exceptional poet and had a great sense of humour that flourished through his work. He began performing at open mike nights and ended up loving the one at the half moon in oxford where he made great friends with like minded people. He always encouraged us 3 to go along and wouldn’t be shy on buying the beer. Many incredible memories were made there and he always spoke fondly of those years. From all of the years of him trying to get material ready we are left with a wealth of his works. Some of which we have laminated and put up around here for you all to enjoy during the wake. 15 years ago we lost our mum and dad lost his wife. We never really knew how much it affected him because he really didn’t talk much about it. But now we have found the countless poems and pieces of writing dedicated to my mum we have realised that he just chose to cope with it like an old school man and not place the burden of his pain on anyone else. This was his way. He was the suffer in silence type. Again he seemed to be quite lost for a while although he still continued his friendships he didn’t seem so keen to go out. But then he began babysitting for his friend Lorna’s granddaughter Scarlett. Again this seemed to give him yet another sense of purpose. Somebody needed him and this caused him to rise to the occasion. He built such a bond with Scarlett that he became quite invested in her wellbeing and driven to want to bring joy into her life. Dad had never really found young children easy and for the first time I think he had found that place inside that allows one to evict their own sense of self judgement and meet the child on their own wavelength. He became so invested in the idea of bringing joy to Scarlett that he began to write a series of children’s story books where the main character was Scarlett. This process in itself gave him a whole heap of new found motivation to complete the works he’d undertaken. He did complete two books. Scarlett’s unicorn, and Scarlett and the witch of wookie hole. These are both available on amazon for purchase. Then when he went onto the 3rd book, Scarlett and the tree of life he began to realise that the subject was so expansive that it warranted a trilogy in itself. This work was not quite complete in his passing but it is somewhat close and Steve has been passed the notes necessary to finish all of the works off for him. Scarlet and my daughter Imogen became good friends and so my dad began taking them both out together. He took them to the cinema, to the arcades, farms and regularly just to the park. I saw a new side to my dad then that I hadn’t seen before. A man who now seemed to be savouring the moment. He became softer and more open about his feelings than he ever had before. It did occur to me that maybe he was facing the reality of his mortality and it seems my intuition somewhat served me well. This gave me an opportunity to commit more to our relationship and I’m glad that I did. We went to poker nights in Oxford with his friends. We went out for meals with my family, Something he had never really been keen to do before. But most of all many times we talked until the early hours of the morning and I got to know him in a way I never had before, with his guard down and his heart open. We talked about our pasts and we speculated about the future of the universe. We just bonded as a father and son should. My dad never made much money in his life. What he did make above what he needed. He gave away. Unfortunately the world we live in is suffering from a form of insanity that causes them to view money as the definition of success. But what truly is the value of money against the currency of kindness? My dad led by example that we must be courageous enough to follow our own morals and let those be our truth instead of acting like children who bow when they are told what to do by an authority that doesn’t recognise love. Dad falling ill did seem to happen fairly suddenly. He was diagnosed with cancer and at his first chemo appointment things escalated and he never returned home. Even faced with the situation he was, in the early weeks when I visited him although he was clearly struggling, he pulled himself out of bed and leaning on his walking stick reeled off joke after joke just to bring a smile to my face. Then in following weeks he went to Sobell house hospice and was allowed unlimited visiting time. Me and my son Andy went in and spent the evening with him watching the euro final. He was a bit disappointed but not surprised. He thought he could have done a better job managing the team. As time went on and it became clear dad was reaching the end of the road. Me and Moon were with him most days and were happy to show him our support, it was an honour to serve him in his hour of need. We decided that we should play his own music all the time so he could go out hearing something he loved. But this went on for about 3 days and he was still with us. He had heard everything from ACDC to Cindy Lauper. On his final day me and my bro had to leave and so his 2 sisters Nicky and Lianne took our place. They put a film on and he went out to a song by lady gaga. We thought it was hilarious at first. But then we listened to it and found it very fitting. It felt as though he chose this song. In the same way he chose that the time felt right to leave this life as an accomplished writer would. By returning the end of his story to the place where it all began, with his sisters by his side. We are all happy for him. We are all happy that he’s at peace. We are happy his last few weeks were full of laughter where possible. But most of all we are happy to have known the legend that was Chris Watkins and we are thankful for a lifetime of memories to cherish. We left a notebook for dad in the hospice. The last thing that he ever wrote was this: Thinking back, I’ve had my successes and my failures too, Both have taught me lessons and should not be ignored, Truth be told, gambles come out even at best, We make our choices and we abide by them.

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