And this was in the news yesterday because it was exceptional
- the day
- the weather
but ..........
My mind turns to Potter.
Phil Potter was a tough rough loud dirty foul fast talking 15 year old club kid some sheds of years ago.
And I loved him dearly.
He had hair which was long.
Hanging into his eyes and ears - all of them not well washed.
His eyes were full of puss and infection.
I could not see his ears.
He was great at talking but he didn’t understand the concept of listening!
For some reason he decided that he wanted to keep his denim covered leather jacket and follow God at the same time.
I have a great audio tape of me interviewing him in a derelict farm in Wales about his faith.
All the time he was being interviewed he was being abused and jested with by passing peers.
It is a fascinating item of history for me Joan and the Sheilas.
When he left school he aspired to working on the waltzer on the travelling fairground.
He did and he went missing for periods over the next few years.
But we kept good contact and Potter became a welcome guest to both club and family.
When we moved on from that project and went to work and live at St Helens YMCA we kept contact until he joined the Army.
When we moved on from that project and went to work and live at St Helens YMCA we kept contact until he joined the Army.
That was before we moved to work in London's East End, in 1975, where he visited irregularly.
As a Royal Marine Commando he was first on the boat to fight in the Falklands War when the armada set forth. Those tense times in history were featured in the TV news often but we had the personal Potter letters. So Potter, still a regular visitor to Wilson Mansions, our East-End Estate, sailed away, writing regular letters during his sea journey on the Canberra the converted troop ship.
The tough East End kids who had met him, and yearned for news of him, especially those serving Borstal and Prison sentences, received letters from Potter too.
He was a man of struggling faith - aren't we all? It was all real - during that battle. He returned to us alive and well.
In the following months, after his return, he often visited us at Wilson Mansions in his battered Datsun car, following days of running up and down Welsh mountains with a back-pack full of house bricks.
He was training to be the fittest of the fittest because he wanted to join the SAS elite. He applied. He joined.
He was training to be the fittest of the fittest because he wanted to join the SAS elite. He applied. He joined.
He continued to visit but it was strange because he just showed up at anytime unannounced and sat at the family table, sleeping on the downstairs floor. By next morning he was gone. He was back to some secret SAS venture he never talked about.
The most professional of armed robbers and violent robbers from both in and out of prison - respected him good and proper.
He came to The Greenbelt festival with us and hung out at the festival a number of times. He did a few trips to the bank with the ticket takings. An SAS man alongside the cash transit was an extra security.
I have photographs of him. Many of you may have met him. This man who always talked without any 'full-stops'.
That was Potter.
He used to call me 'Wilson'.
Years after there was a massive unexpected storm, as above, in the south of England well remembered because it brought the south to a standstill. Trees down, trains down, power down and traffic still. A disaster in domestic fabric terms too. Michael Fish was the weather man in those days and had said that the weather would be fine!
That same day Joy and me were at a funeral in the North of England - my birth home town - St Helens. We missed the disaster. The weather was fine in the North West of England.
But we had our own.
We were at the funeral of Potter.
He died, they said, of natural causes.
I don’t know how he kept his faith in God as he served in the Armed Forces. Especially in the SAS. But he did.
He called me Wilson.
I called him Potter.
I weep for him
yesterday
and today.
