Die healthy
A good family friend died this morning. He was diagnosed with lung cancer just before Christmas. The doctors gave him three months to live. I guess this time they got it a bit wrong.
My dad always wanted to be a farmer; he spent most of his childhood with his grandfather on the family farm in Easter Ross. His father, however, was a career naval officer and had no desire to stay on land, let alone work it. He let out the farm and went to sea. Then a well-intentioned Labour government changed the law on agricultural tenancies, effectively allowing a sitting tenant to pass the farm on to his own son. The value of holdings with tenancies plummetted overnight, and there was no way that my father could take over the farm. It was sold to the tenant farmer for a fraction of what it should have been worth and dad went to work in London instead. But he always harboured a desire to return to his roots (pun intended).
When the City deregulated in the late eighties and small English partnerships were being bought out left right and centre by the big American stockbroking firms, dad took his opportunity and redundancy money and set about finding a suitable farm to buy. To help him in this, he engaged the services of Mike Milne and Peter Wishart, agricultural consultants. After a couple of misses, they found a nice place in North East Fife, and that's where my parents live and work to this day.
We didn't see much of Peter Wishart - it was a standing joke that he would always preface anything he said with the phrase 'I'm not a well man'. Then he went and proved it by dying suddenly. Mike, however, went on. Dad employed him on a consultancy basis to help introduce him to all the important people in Scottish Agriculture. As my dad's confidence grew, so Mike's role diminished, but he was always at the end of the phone with a bit of advice, and he used to visit regularly. We shared some machinery with another farm that he managed, and I remember the mindless tedium of driving all the way to Dollar in a rickety old tractor to pick up a topper or a bogey and bring it home. Over the years, he and his wife Moina became good friends - my little brother even invited them to his wedding.
Dad pretty much retired from active farming about two years ago, following a disagreement with a young stirk. Most of the grazing is let out now, and the arable is farmed by one of the neighbours under a partnership agreement. I last saw Mike in July of last year, when I was up with JulieD for my mother's 65th birthday. He seemed fine then, just dropping in to shoot the breeze and have a spot of lunch. It was a regular thing; I can't count the number of times I've sat at the old kitchen table and talked with him about this and that over a bowl of soup and a cheese sandwich.
But every time every time he came, every time we offered him something remotely wholesome to go with his lunch - a salad perhaps, or something green - he would always say the same thing: 'no thanks, I don't want to die healthy.'
Well, at least he got his wish.
Goodbye Mike.
My dad always wanted to be a farmer; he spent most of his childhood with his grandfather on the family farm in Easter Ross. His father, however, was a career naval officer and had no desire to stay on land, let alone work it. He let out the farm and went to sea. Then a well-intentioned Labour government changed the law on agricultural tenancies, effectively allowing a sitting tenant to pass the farm on to his own son. The value of holdings with tenancies plummetted overnight, and there was no way that my father could take over the farm. It was sold to the tenant farmer for a fraction of what it should have been worth and dad went to work in London instead. But he always harboured a desire to return to his roots (pun intended).
When the City deregulated in the late eighties and small English partnerships were being bought out left right and centre by the big American stockbroking firms, dad took his opportunity and redundancy money and set about finding a suitable farm to buy. To help him in this, he engaged the services of Mike Milne and Peter Wishart, agricultural consultants. After a couple of misses, they found a nice place in North East Fife, and that's where my parents live and work to this day.
We didn't see much of Peter Wishart - it was a standing joke that he would always preface anything he said with the phrase 'I'm not a well man'. Then he went and proved it by dying suddenly. Mike, however, went on. Dad employed him on a consultancy basis to help introduce him to all the important people in Scottish Agriculture. As my dad's confidence grew, so Mike's role diminished, but he was always at the end of the phone with a bit of advice, and he used to visit regularly. We shared some machinery with another farm that he managed, and I remember the mindless tedium of driving all the way to Dollar in a rickety old tractor to pick up a topper or a bogey and bring it home. Over the years, he and his wife Moina became good friends - my little brother even invited them to his wedding.
Dad pretty much retired from active farming about two years ago, following a disagreement with a young stirk. Most of the grazing is let out now, and the arable is farmed by one of the neighbours under a partnership agreement. I last saw Mike in July of last year, when I was up with JulieD for my mother's 65th birthday. He seemed fine then, just dropping in to shoot the breeze and have a spot of lunch. It was a regular thing; I can't count the number of times I've sat at the old kitchen table and talked with him about this and that over a bowl of soup and a cheese sandwich.
But every time every time he came, every time we offered him something remotely wholesome to go with his lunch - a salad perhaps, or something green - he would always say the same thing: 'no thanks, I don't want to die healthy.'
Well, at least he got his wish.
Goodbye Mike.
Comments
As mottos go, that's not a bad one.