It’s grim up north.

No, I thought you’d told me in person, not a Uk Hotrods member ‘spilling the beans’ as such. Would have been at the Nats/Supernats or an early RRG. That’s why I wondered if I’d mixed the story up with someone else who was on there, what with it being 20-odd years ago (how has that happened?) and lots of alcohol. I thought the Uk Hotrods lot weren’t too bad a bunch really, not compared to who you found on the forums when Uk Hotrods got wrapped up.

Wasn’t my intention to bring up any skeletons in the closet if I have - I don’t mind deleting my previous post if you like.

This is the important post.

The pivotal movement that set the cards tumbling, and brought we to where we are today. That moment being the death of my gran. It was the 21st October 2017, and it was a Saturday. I know this because I was about halfway up the A14 somewhere past Bury St. Edmunds on my way north to stop at my parents and go to the NSRA northern swapmeet the next day with my dad. I remember it very clearly as I’d only being going about an hour and my mum rang me. We are not a family that does constant phone calls and sit-reps, just vague plans and rough outlines, so I immediately knew something was wrong. I very vividly remember my mum telling me she’d gone round that morning to find her dead in bed.
She’d almost fallen out of bed but not quite, but wasn’t conscious enough to set off her panic alarm round her neck, so it must have been pretty quick. I was still over two hours away so all I could do was keep driving. By the time I was there she’d been picked up and taken to the chapel of rest so all there was was an empty house.
Although my mum had a good cry when I turned up, what may surprise you is the overwhelming emotion for all involved was relief. You see we’d known she was on the way out for a while, she had carers come in once a day since she’d broken her hip to tidy and help her with cooking, and her bed had been moved downstairs. my mum did what she could to look after her whilst fighting her own heath problems but it was obvious any arrangements were not going to be long term.
The relief came from the fact she’d managed to die at home. She was absolutely terrified of the idea of dying in an unfamiliar hospital surrounded by people she didn’t know. She made it quite clear she’d rather die at home on her own over that. So much so she had a DNR notice in case anyone found her on the floor but not gone.
It had been a bit dicey as to wether she’d actually get her wish, she’d been in and out of hospital for various reasons in the few months before it happened, and the stress of keeping her out of them long enough for her to die at home was getting to everyone. So when it actually happened, it felt like an achievement.
Even 5 years on I’m not sad at her death, because I feel an odd sense of fulfilment that she got her last wish.

And that’s when things started to change after remaining the same for so long.
It’s funny how just one person existing can uphold the status quo. Pretty much everything I’d known my entire 33 years was now about to change. Even though I’d grown up and moved away from it all, it was all still there every time I went back, more or less the same, maybe a bit less prim and proper as advancing age had prevented such rigorous maintenance. But now that person was gone.

Obviously when a death happens the big job you can’t hold back from is sorting the funeral, but after my Grandads death my gran had bought a funeral plan and had sorted out what she wanted on the day, music and readings and such, so we didn’t really have to do much, especially as the funeral director was a long time family friend. but in the interim few days my mum dropped a huge one on me and my sister. We assumed that everything would just be passed over to my mum, she already had power of attorney so was running the shop anyway.
But that assumption was incorrect…

Guilty as charged!
There were some good meet ups as I recall. To any members that met my ex I can only apologise.

Tbh I don’t remember seeing much of Seth’s escapades until I joined up on here.

I remember a guy building a red oxide 30/31 sedan in Scotland I think, it was exactly the sort of car I was into, chopped and channelled, fenderless. It was someone I’ve spoken to a few times since but I’ll be damned if I can remember his name. Also holmesys good truck had a lot of updates.

Did you have the same car back then too? I remember there were quite a few pops but I used to not pay much attention to them as I was interested in other things, and it was hard to find what you wanted to see under the deluge of emails.

Regarding my gran/attitudes to death in general, I think this country is way too hung up on everyone wanting to live forever, but not actually have much of a life for their latter years. I’ve seen how having health issues forced my grandad to slow down/stop doing what he used to, and how difficult he found it. I for one don’t want to end up on that sort of situation. As you say there’s nothing sad about anyone dying at any age over 70 if they’ve done what they wanted with their life.

Sounds like one of Big Ian's projects. Sorry, I can't remember his surname.

So, what happened next? And what was the huge bombshell that had been dropped on us?


Well, to put it simply, it was my grans will. Where we (me and my sister) had assumed everything would go to my mum as she was their only child, It didn’t.
My mum new about this, but we’d not been told. Typical of my gran really.
The entire estate was to be split 50/25/25%, my mum getting the 50% and the next generation getting 25% each. This was fairly sombering, as it was going to be a not insignificant amount of money- far more than we ever expected to get. there were 3 houses and a fair amount in bonds, ISAs and just plain old cash.
It was quickly ascertained there were going to be two major problems with this, from a business point of view anyway. One was the value of the whole estate and wether inheritance tax would come into play, and the second was divvying it up in a fair and proportional way, given the value of certain non-splittable assets like the houses.

There was then the human aspect of two of the properties having sitting tenants, one of whom had a historic tenancy dating back to the ‘70s, that although had no written contract gave him far more rights than you might imagine- far more than the other tenant on a modern estate-agent written contract. My gran was also very worried about what would happen to this tenant if she died before him, so we’d reassured her he’d be allowed to carry on living there until his time came too. This was the aforementioned Harold, but we’ll get onto him shortly.
The whole thing had the potential to become very messy very quickly tbh. cashing in ISAs and bonds, and splitting up cash in bank accounts was easy, as was going through my grans house and apportioning who got what in terms of keepsakes and furniture etc. there were pretty much no arguments about who got what in that respect.

I only really had a couple of items out of the house I wanted- my grandads Windsor chair (that had been his grandads at least, so had some age to it) as I remember it being in the kitchen and him always sitting on it when he came home from work for dinner.

His late 70s/early 80s Sony stereo system. This would have been horrendous money when he bought it new, and it lived in a cabinet in the front room. I had no interest in the ugly cabinet, but I remember being fascinated by the dot matrix displays and brushed stainless switches as a kid.

A small wooden writing slope that used to live on the dresser in the dining room and had various small households tools and widgets in. It was basically his man-drawer well before such things existed, and was a quick go-to if something important broke at night or whatever so you didn’t have to trudge down to the garage to get a screwdriver to change a fuse.

I was more than happy to get those main items, and it was sort of assumed I would. although I did also get various other smaller things as we cleared out the house, they were supplementary to the things that first sprang to mind when I was asked what I wanted.

It was also assumed that sorting out the garage and the contents was my responsibility, mostly because I was the only one who knew what half of it was, and if it was worth anything.

and as my mum had power of attorney it was easy enough to keep running my grans estate as if she was still alive. Indeed in name she sort of lived for a couple of years longer than she did in reality whilst everything was sorted out. The tenants kept paying rent, and the bills were then paid even though the ‘big house’ was now empty. In the meantime estate agents and probate values dealt with putting numbers on the big items before we could decide what to do with them.

Drip-feeding teaser!

Loving following along with this story - thanks for taking the time to write it up.

And fair play for keeping true to your Gran's wishes too. Have been going through probate etc in the past year after Dad's death - having to deal with members of the family whose only instinct is to put their hand out wanting it crossed with silver having never put anything in to justify any reward is fecking annoying to say the least.

Really like your thinking here Dez and 100% agree about respect etc,
Thanks for the write up, really enjoying following this thread,
Nigel