Derek Brooker 1941-2024

My dad, Derek Brooker, died on New Year’s Eve 2024. A few weeks into the new year, we held a celebration of his life at the village hall. Being the resident family show-off, I was tasked with delivering a eulogy. I tried not to make it too morose or earnest; Dad had an anarchic sense of humour and was constitutionally allergic to sentiment.

But some sentiment dribbled in through the cracks. Prior to me speaking, many people shared warm memories; his social services colleagues called him a “wonderful boss”, and one of my childhood friends (whom I hadn’t seen in at least a decade) recalled him being “the coolest dad in the village”. I also heard a shocking first-hand account of what may have been Mum and Dad’s first snog beside the phone box outside Bull Croft Park in Wallingford although sadly that didn’t make it into the eulogy. Nor did I repeat it here.

Dad spent his whole life in Brightwell. He was born in Church Lane to his parents Elsie and Joseph, in what was then known as ‘the shop’ (for obvious reasons), and later became ‘Monteith’ (for baffling ones). He went to school in the village hall - I picture his schooldays as a sort of Dickensian reboot of the Bash Street Kids; a childhood photo of him in uniform aged about 9 makes him look like the spawn of Jacob Rees-Mogg.

After school, he trained as an electrician but found time for interests like shooting and rock climbing - two things I've only attempted in video games. He kept a shotgun at home and shot pheasants, presumably legally. A properly rustic lifestyle - he even recalled eating ‘rook pie’ as a youngster. It’s quite a life that stretches from eating rook pie at one end to arguing on the phone with Gigaclear Broadband at the other.

In 1965, he married Anne. It was a Quaker ceremony, rare enough to make the Wallingford Herald. They weren’t devout Quakers; they didn’t have the outfits or anything. Whenever I mention my Quaker background, people assume I grew up in a sort of porridge cult, which is only 96% true.

Soon after marrying, my sister Sam arrived, followed a few years later by me -- which was all the encouragement they needed to stop breeding. By 1973, Dad moved the whole family to live with his parents in Church Lane. Having three generations squashed together under one roof must have been fun, because about ten minutes after moving in, Dad hurriedly built a DIY extension. Construction went entirely without incident - unless you count the near-fatal one when he fell off the roof. A bag of cement broke his fall, bursting and leaving three-year-old me covered head-to-toe in dust, shrieking like an alabaster banshee.

Around this time, Dad also underwent a career change, switching from electrician to social worker, which sounds like a big leap, although both jobs involved defusing situations and getting the occasional nasty shock — such as the time (in the late 80s) when he was attacked by the father of a child being taken into care.

Dad was knifed in the stomach and slashed across the cheek (I'm aware this is beginning to sound like the eulogy for a Kray Twin). He recalled the surgeon reassuring him by remarking that it was “good to be cut with an unused Stanley blade”. Dad finding amusement in the use of the word “good” even in this dark moment perfectly illustrates his pragmatically dark sense of humour, which I inherited and later monetized.

Outside work, Dad's taste in music could politely be described as ‘eclectic’, and impolitely as ‘batshit’. He enjoyed everything from Lonnie Donegan to the Sex Pistols, Kraftwerk to jazz.

His other great loves were wine and cycling, sometimes in that order. His passion for wine was legendary. It’s fair to say by the end of a meal he was sometimes half-pissed. Sometimes whole-pissed, come to that. But it was his passion for cycling that bordered on obsession.

For their 25th wedding anniversary, in place of a party or a fancy dinner, he celebrated with the impulse purchase of a tandem bike. Their initial test ride around the village was marked by much undignified “wobbling and squealing from the back” (his words, Mum), but they quickly progressed to ambitious trips across France, including an epic 917-mile journey from Narbonne to Cherbourg. In other words, they embraced and appreciated the freedom of movement across Europe. Which is more than can be said for some newer residents of the village. Well, one of them.

In 2014, Dad faced cancer and had his bladder replaced with a ‘neo bladder’ – a true medical miracle performed at the Royal Berks Hospital in Reading. Remarkably, it didn't stop him cycling or enjoying wine. He remained in good spirits, good health, and good shape right until the end.