My father was born in East Sussex, on the 30th May 1930.
George V was on the throne… Ramsey Macdonald was the Prime-Minister …and Bill Tilden was about to win Wimbledon for a 3rd time.
He was christened John Michael – following a family tradition of naming all first-born sons John. But everyone knew him then… and for the rest of his life…. as Michael. Or Mike.
Life for baby Michael didn’t have the smoothest of starts. As a toddler he contracted tuberculosis and spent about a year in Princess Alice Hospital in Eastbourne. A long time… but as he would often say subsequently, he never spent another night in hospital for the 90 or so years that followed.
However, worrying as it must have been for his father Brian… and mother Pip…the mischievous infant Michael soon became a firm favourite with the doctors and nurses.
On one occasion his anxious parents arrived at the hospital to find…to their horror… that his bed was empty and neatly made up, with no sign of the occupant. They feared the worse and it was only after a frantic few minutes that they discovered their first born running amok up and down a neighbouring ward engaged in a very boisterous game of hide & seek with the nurses. Accompanied by much laughter and giggling.
In his childhood, Michael, discovered the love of many things that were to become important to him in his life. Notably cricket…more of that later … and the cinema. Michael became a regular patron of the Picture Palace in Hailsham, where he learned to love the thrills of Hollywood westerns, the sharp wit of WC Fields and the musicals of Fred Astaire.
In 1946… when my father was just 15, he had to face the devastating loss of his mother who died at the age of only 37. As the oldest of 3 siblings, Michael had to take on the role of big brother in more ways than one for his brother Miles and his sister Vanessa. As Vanessa remembers Michael was always on the lookout for his baby sister, filling the vacuum left by their mother. Even to the point of giving her the money to buy her first bra.
Michael was a bright student, and he won a scholarship to attend the prestigious Christ Hospital school in Horsham. Resplendent in the school uniform of ankle length blue outer coat, breeches, and yellow socks.
After school and national service Michael enrolled at Law School, where, one day, in the queue for coffee, he met Stuart Taylor, who was to become both his future best man and a friend for life. I know unfortunately Stuart was unable to make the trip today, but I believe you are watching on zoom from Norfolk so waving to you and Anne and sending our love.
Next up was a job as a young solicitor in Watford, and it was here he was to have another life-changing meeting. He was spotted…or more to the point…his legs were spotted, by a young Josephine Perkin while he was playing tennis across the road from her parent’s house. Michael and Jo were soon introduced by mutual friends, and she quicky realised there was more to him than fetching white shorts and a booming forehand…love blossomed.
On the 13th of September 1958, Michael and Jo were married at the Parish church in my mother’s hometown of Bushey in Hertfordshire. The local newspaper reported on the occasion with the memorable… if slightly oversharing… headline….”Watford solicitor takes Bushey bride”.
And so began 64 years of happily married life. It wasn’t long before my brother Tim was born and then… after a move to Surrey to take a role as a junior partner in a firm of solicitors in Farnham… the arrival of yours truly and our sister Alice.
Michael and Jo settled into life here in Rowledge, firstly round the corner in Fullers Road and then in 1965 into the family home in Chapel Road.
He quickly became a well-known member of village and Farnham society, and we’ll hear more about this shortly from his great friend Jim Lloyd.
Professionally he was a respected partner at Potter and Kempson, later known as Bell’s.
As one of his colleagues… Jenny… recalls he had a reputation for fastidious tidiness. To tease him, she and the team would sometimes leave one or two paper clips on the stairs up to his office. They’d hear him come in…bounding upstairs, taking 2 steps at a time… as was his want… and then grind to a thundering stop as he spotted the errant clips and come back to the reception to pointedly return them to their rightful home. This obsession with tidying up was always in evidence, as he would often return from a walk with a fistful litter, collected from the street and rehoused into the nearest bin.
Away from work …and encouraged by my mother…Michael overcame his natural shyness to become an enthusiastic member of the local Amateur Dramatics group here in Rowledge… the mighty Boundary Players. Over the years he built a reputation for his signature performance as the stern-faced, sometimes crotchety, often faintly bemused … judge… priest…doctor… policeman…Colonel…Grand Duke and so on.
The role may have changed from play to play…but the performance always …stubbornly …stayed exactly …the same. Afterall, why change a winning formula?
Away from treading the boards he was regular on the courts at Rowledge Tennis Club. Where his opponents were often baffled by his convention-defying approach to the sport … in which his 2nd serve was always twice as powerful as his 1st. Delivered in quick succession with a cavalier flourish and laser-like accuracy.
And when he wasn’t acing it at tennis, he loved his cricket. He was a lifelong supporter of Sussex County Cricket Club. Many Summer Sundays would see him driving my brother and I down to Hove, to watch the likes of Tony Greig and the Buss brothers in the John Player League. Always a keen observer of the Sussex faithful he’d be quick to spot and namecheck the regulars. Like the smiley raffle ticket seller … “Watch out… here comes laughing boy”… or the resident of a neighbouring flat who would regularly watch the action from his rooftop terrace dressed in only his Speedo’s… “Oh, oh boys … Tarzan is back”. All to the amusement of the Sussex members around us in the pavilion.
If Tim and I inherited his passion for cricket…for Alice…it was the love of a good read that he passed on. From organising her childhood Saturday morning deliveries of the Dandy and membership of the Puffin Club… right up to the current day with… his still ongoing gift… of a subscription to Private Eye magazine.
Family holidays were often epic affairs. He especially loved France with its sunshine and wine… Many a summer he drove us down the French byroads in his white Ford Cortina…complete with plastic seats and no air-conditioning. With only Eye Spy books and a long list of towns enroute to tick off provided for the kids’ entertainment. And once we had arrived at the gite or campsite he would head to the beach to swim in a perfectly straight line out to sea and…then back again… sunglasses on… with military precision breaststroke …and not one hair on his head ever got wet.
After he retired in 1990, life remained busy. He became a keen quizzer, including an impressive television appearance on William G. Stewart’s 15 to 1. And he looked forward to playing for The Cherry Tree pub in the Monday night Quiz League …always hopeful that this would be the week when there were questions on Berlioz, the American Civil War… OR the Sussex bowling attack in the 1963 Gillette Cup Final.
On one famous occasion he thought his luck was in and his knowledge of Hollywood musicals was about to pay off in a crucial moment of a particularly tense battle. His individual question was on music… “Name T’Pau’s (as in T’Pau) biggest hit. It topped the charts for 5 weeks.” My father… sat back in his chair with a smile… as he answered triumphantly – ‘That…will be Fiddler on the Roof!’
He also loved playing Scrabble. Either with his good friends John & Joan Crotty or on his iPad with friends, family, or strangers all over the world. Never once losing his sharpness to land a big score or lay down an obscure word.
Another area in which he would always have a few choice words was politics. At the risk of alienating half the congregation here today, my father was always a keen supporter of the Liberal party. At election times the front gate in Chapel Road was always stoically orange in an area that was otherwise a sea of blue.
Always a man of fairness and integrity it came as no surprise that in later life he was particularly critical of recent Governments and Prime-Ministers. His attitude to the current climate was evident only a few months ago when we were taking on the services of a home help agency to support him for an hour every morning. As, unfortunately, is the normal protocol… when assessing the needs of new clients, the agency asked:
“Is there any type of person from any background, that you would rather not have come to your house, Mr O’Dell?”
Slightly puzzled by the question, my father thought long and hard, before replying, with a little twinkle in his eye:
“Well, I’d rather not have a Conservative”…
In his retirement years my father became a proud Grandfather to seven grandchildren.
Grandpa was a warm and loving constant in all their childhoods. They will each have their own special memories. From playing cricket in the garden…sharing his love of musicals and sunshine… endless games of Wot or Coppit at the kitchen table… or swapping winning strategies for Scrabble
And for his eldest Grandchild…Beth…the thrill of having her first, most probably illegal, glass of wine on a fish & chip meal out with Grandpa and Grandma.
So, there you go… please remember with a smile…
The Sussex lad turned Surrey Solicitor
The Francophile, wine lover
A tennis playing …occasional thespian.
The movie buff - quizzer….with a talent for a triple word score
A liberal (with a big & small L)
A dependable colleague… a loyal friend…
With a bone-dry sense of humour who invariably had a mischievous comment up his sleeve… sometimes appropriate …occasionally not.
And finally... for his family… although we will all miss him…our loss will always be tempered by nothing but the warmest of memories for a much loved…
Son…uncle…cousin…big brother…grandfather…lovely Dad……and perfect husband.
A good man…
