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Family Life by Wendy on November 10th, 2008 1:19 pm
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One of the hottest topics around the blogosphere right now is ‘which dog will Obama buy his kids?’ . It got me thinking about the time when I was 12 years old and my dad thought he would get me and my sister, of all things, a pony. Of course we were both at that age when all young girls seem to go through that horse-crazy phase and my dad was going through one of his more impractical phases.
When dad got one of his crazy ideas there was no stopping him…
My sister and I had been nagging at dad for ages for a pony - we had had horse riding lessons and trail rides at a place called Vision Valley at Arcadia just outside of Sydney (where I had a terrifying experience on a mule called ‘Fred’). The trouble was that where we lived at North Manly did not provide the proper set-up for accommodating a member of the equine species. Our front and backyard was all bush, trees, rockeries and even a waterfall - no paddocks, no pastures and no room anywhere for a stable. We had a patch of lawn which was terraced just at the front of the house - about 30 feet wide.
Dad though found someone in the paper selling an old nag called ‘Brandy’ - she was cheap and ancient but dad thought she’d be perfect for us. We went to see her - Mum wanted nothing at all to do with the venture; Mum was always the practical half of my parent’s partnership and could just see the problems that would have occurred had dad bought the horse.
Dad had had experience with horses in his younger days; his sister ran a property in the Burragorang Valley in the days before it was reclaimed by the Govt in the 1940’s and turned into what is now Warragamba Dam.
So we stood looking at this horse at it’s home near Curl Curl beach when dad suggested to the owner that he saddle it up so we could have a ride…
“Oh you cannot ride her, she is not broken in for riding - she’s just a pet. And one other thing - she does not like men so only the girls or your wife can actually approach her”.
So we didn’t buy Brandy. I think dad came to his senses though when he realised soon after how much money he had saved himself when you take in the cost of feeding the horse plus all the equestrian riding apparel that you need for looking the part. I am not sure what became of Brandy but I distinctly recall the owner mention the word ‘glue’ as we were leaving…
Copyright © 2007-2008 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.Popularity: 3% [?]
But don’t ask me how to actually pronounce it. That’s the Welsh motto and translates as ‘Wales forever’ - and I totally agree with that. I thought I’d write a few words about Wales as, believe it or not, we are thinking already about where to go on our next family jaunt - even though we are only just home from the last one.
Having a home in Northern Ireland makes most of the United Kingdom relatively easy to access these days, even for just a day trip, as the budget airlines fly out of Belfast City and International airports to most of the main UK airports. Wales though is one place I have not visited and yet have always wanted to. My mother’s grandfather came from Wales so there is a bit of a pull from that side as well. We flew over Wales on a flight back to Belfast one time about five years ago and I was captured by all that green landscape - it looked stunning from up in the air and would be even better from the ground.
The Tenby beaches in Wales
As I’ve said before we always go in for the self catering option when away for more than three days and Wales serves the tourist well in this regard. We are looking at a Tenby Self Catering Cottage as it is a seaside location and there’s plenty of things for us all to do as a family. Now, the beaches in Wales are not what I was used to in Australia but you can still do the fish and chips thing on the beach (which is one of my fave things to do) ; the beaches have the EC Blue Flag award which means that they are safe for swimming and the water is nice and clean.
There’s a good number of theme parks to take ourselves to (I’m a big kid in that regard), wildlife reserves and of course those great castles which dot the Welsh countryside.
We aren’t planning to head off there until June 2009 but being the summer you need to book your cottage around Xmas time to get the one you really want.
Copyright © 2007-2008 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.Popularity: 5% [?]
I am not in the habit of copying and pasting content from other websites here in order to fill some space but on this occasion I will make an exception. I came across this article today in the UK edition of the Daily Mail and it regards a heartbreaking story about which I wrote in June this year. This is the follow-up to a story which everyone should know about, especially anyone who has knocked back a few at a party or down the pub and then arrogantly assumed they were okay to drive home…and I’d say we all know at least one person who has done so.
” After a car crash with footballer Luke McCormick killed her children, Amanda Peak tells her own heartbreaking story…
Their bedrooms are silent now. She can’t bear the sight of their shoes by the front door - and still talks about them as if they’re playing outside. If you want to know the real cost of drink-driving, read this mother’s story
On the morning of June 7 this year, Amanda Peak rose in the small hours to kiss a sleepy goodbye to her ten-year-old son Arron and his brother Ben, eight. The boys and their father Phil were leaving early for a trip to Silverstone, and Arron and Ben were brimming with excitement at the thought of visiting the race track.
She told them to behave themselves, made sure they were wearing their seatbelts and waved goodbye as they drove away with three family friends for the treat they had looked forward to for weeks. That receding view of her sons through the car window was the last time she would see them alive.
The boys were killed when professional footballer Luke McCormick, drunk and speeding, careered his Range Rover into their Toyota people-carrier and destroyed it.
Police photographs show a contorted wreck, from which it is astounding anyone escaped alive.
Plymouth Argyle goalkeeper McCormick, who was logged travelling at 97 miles per hour on the morning of the crash, has just begun a seven-year jail sentence but is likely to be free in half that time.
Now, Amanda and Phil - who suffered horrific injuries in the crash - face a lifetime burdened by grief.
Today, they talk at length for the first time about the devastating aftermath of their loss, and their unflinching account must surely be the most powerful weapon in their new campaign to have the drink-drive law changed to one of zero tolerance for offenders.
It confronts the absurd truth that someone who kills on the road after wilfully making themselves incapable of driving safely can face a lighter prison term than, say, a City fraudster.
Amanda, her voice tense, recalls the hours after the crash as a nightmarish series of horrors blurred by shock.
‘It was like I wasn’t really there, as if things were so bad I couldn’t believe it. A few things stand out; holding the boys in my arms when they had both been brought back to the hospital morgue. Most of it was like being punched again and again and having to keep getting up on my feet.’
She is a pretty woman of 31, but she looks gaunt, having lost almost 3st she could not afford to lose. Her fine blonde hair has begun to fall out. Phil, a former truck builder, says little.
His injuries were so severe - his back, his neck and five of his ribs were broken - that he was sedated by painkillers in the days immediately after the crash and unable to absorb what he was told. He can now take no more than five steps from his wheelchair and is almost wholly dependent on his wife’s help.
‘I’ve worked hard since the day I left school when I was 16 and it was important to me,’ he says. ‘Enjoying what I was doing, bringing home the money for my family. Now I’m 38 and I have to be babysat like a child.’
It was 6.30am on June 7 when Amanda received a call at home in Partington, Manchester, from one of the nursing staff at Stafford University Hospital. There had been an accident on the M6 and Phil was hurt but, as far as was known, everyone else was fine.
She and her friend Lisa Bennett, the mother of the other two boys in the car, immediately set off on the same route Phil had taken a few hours earlier. But, as they approached the junction for Stoke-on-Trent, they saw that it was blocked by flashing emergency service lights.
‘Straight away, I knew something was not right,’ she says. ‘You don’t close off a whole motorway for a minor accident. When we got to the hospital, I grabbed Lisa’s hand because there were just too many police there. I was scared.
‘The nurses put us in a little room on our own and I said to Lisa: ” Someone’s dead. I’ve seen this too often on television.” Then the consultant from Accident and Emergency came in and he was crying. He told us two of the boys had gone and they thought it was Arron and Ben.’
Amanda can’t remember much of what happened next. ‘Lisa told me I was screaming and hitting out at anyone who came near me. I identified Ben’s body at 9am. I was rocking him and telling him: “Wake up, wake up!”‘ She falters, forcing back tears.
‘Arron was still on the motorway. There was nothing they could do for him. He came in two hours later and I couldn’t leave him, not Arron. He was my first-born…’ She has to stop. The pain etched on her face is so acute that you want to turn away.
Phil, Arron and Ben were all sitting on the driver’s side of the car, one behind the other and took the brunt of the impact when it rolled down an embankment. Phil Bennett, the other adult passenger, can hardly walk because of nerve damage to his legs, and his sons, 15-year-old Luke and eight-year-old Jackson, Ben’s best friend, suffered muscle damage and concussion.
Phil Peak can groggily remember careering into the ditch and then being wheeled into hospital. ‘I was on morphine, so it didn’t register what Amanda was saying.
‘My birthday was on the 13th, the next week, and it wasn’t until I asked where the boys were, and the cards, and Lisa told me again that it finally got through to me just what exactly had happened.
‘I saw my sons again at the undertaker’s, the bodies of these children I had loved since the day they were born. Then it was real to me that they had gone.
‘All I could think was: Why? Why couldn’t it have been me? Why couldn’t it have been just one of them? The questions go round and round in your head, but nothing anyone can say will make it better - and it’s going to be hard for the rest of our lives.
‘We’re not going to see them get married, or have grandchildren of our own now. They could have had 80 good years ahead of them and it’s gone. He’s taken it all.’
Their tidy house is too quiet now. The Peaks bought a pair of terrier puppies to try to bring life back to the place but it hasn’t really worked.
The children used to thump about: shout, laugh, barge into their mum and demand hugs. They used to watch Manchester United, their team, on the telly and cheer them on. They whooped when their dad said he was taking them for a kick-about in the park or to the woods to ride their bikes round the old BMX track.
Amanda can’t help herself from slipping in and out of the present tense when she describes the boys.
‘Arron got up with his dad and brought me a cup of tea every morning, after he’d seen Phil off to work. He’s thoughtful like that. He’s the same age as the daughter of my friend Lisa whose boys were in the car that day. She was worried about going to his school in September, but he said to her: “Don’t worry, you’ll have me with you.”
‘He’s clever. He got grade 5 in his SAT exams and was going to go into the top sets. And I know I’m his mum, but he was a brilliant footballer, he was really talented.’
She manages a faint smile. ‘Mind you, he could be a pain like most ten year olds’.
‘Ben was cheeky, a comedian. He could make people laugh. He was a lovely little lad with these beautiful brown eyes and long lashes. He was the one who always wanted to help with the cooking. To be honest, it hardly seems worth making meals for
two of us. Phil makes me eat but I don’t want to. I haven’t used the dining room since the boys died.’
All the boys’ things are just as they left them, except for their shoes. Phil and Amanda couldn’t bear to see them unworn in the hall, so Amanda put them carefully in Arron and Ben’s bedrooms.
When she wants to feel close to her sons she goes and sits up there, though Phil cannot manage the stairs any more. Amanda sleeps with him in the sitting room.
He has to take daily blood thinners to reduce the danger from blood clots in his lungs and he still needs pain-killers.
‘Because he’s weak on his left side, I have to help him to the toilet in case his leg slips from under him. In the night, that can mean getting up three or four times. You know, it’s hard work.’
They both seem hollowed out by exhaustion. The past few terrible months have taken an inevitable toll.
Amanda looks at Phil when she says: ‘In 15 years together we haven’t argued - bickered, yes, but not shouted and screamed, because Phil would walk away and wait for me to cool down so we could talk.
‘He was the most laid-back person you could meet, but he’s not the same man any more. It’s frustrating for him, being housebound, and he’s snappy and prickly. I have to force myself to be patient.’
She is caring for Phil without any help. So far, they have struggled by on £75-a-week sick pay but will soon qualify for a disability living allowance, though only for the next two years. Doctors believe there is no chance Phil will ever be well enough to return to work. He used to love his job, where he worked as a team with his two brothers.
‘We’ve got a strong relationship but this is horrible,’ he says. ‘It’s unbelievable that six months ago we were a family and I was fit and active. Now I have to sit and watch my wife do all the work and not do anything to help.’
And what of the man who, at a stroke, destroyed this family? Luke McCormick has not made contact with the Peaks or given them the apology that is the very least he owes them.
‘He can’t repair what he’s done with a bit of paper,’ says Phil. But Amanda would like him to try.
‘If we’d had something from him, a real show of remorse, I wouldn’t forgive him, but at least I might understand. It would help me if he sent a letter. I’d accept it and read it and send him one back. His barrister said he has flashbacks and he doesn’t sleep, but what does he think we’re going through?
‘I have a temper and I can talk without thinking but I want to keep my dignity. Even now, I don’t want to say things about him that I could regret. But the truth is that, at this moment in time, I hate him.’
Until she gave up her job so that she could spend more time with the boys, Amanda did evening work in a bar. She knew the potential dangers of alcohol because she used to take keys from drinkers who were about to drive home, and report to the police those who refused to co-operate.
McCormick had been downing beer and sambuca at a wedding the night before the crash. He was also jetlagged from a trip to New York. At the scene, his blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal maximum. His wild dash along the motorway was against the advice of friends, to confront his fiancee over rumours that she had been unfaithful.
Amanda says: ‘When I used to work at the bar, it used to be that I went home at 1.30am and I got breathalysed every night for four weeks until the police just waved me past because they knew who I was. I kept thinking: “If only, if only someone had stopped McCormick.”
‘I don’t criticise the police because they’ve been amazing, and our Family Liaison Officer has been a godsend, but their hands are tied until the sentencing in this country makes sense and people who cause death by dangerous driving are really made to suffer anything like the way we’re suffering now.’
Few words seem adequate to describe the appalling emptiness of this couple’s lives since their sons were snatched from them.
Amanda, whose day once revolved around her children, won’t look out of the window between 3pm and 4pm in case she sees pupils from the boys’ old school returning to their own homes.
She cannot begin to imagine resuming her roles as a parent governor and coach of the football club. Phil is trapped, helpless, unable to lose himself in work to try to escape from all the memories of the boys he adored. Sometimes he thinks he hears the floorboards creaking in Ben’s room, though the top of the house is empty now.
He and Amanda draw comfort from the fact that their sons were loved, and knew they were loved. They were buried together in a coffin coloured red and white for their team, Manchester United.
What their parents want to convey to the world is that Ben and Arron were not just unfortunate statistics or regrettable fatalities, they were little boys with birthdays and hobbies and favourite books and futures ahead of them.
That is what Phil and Amanda Peak want you to remember that the next time you’re tempted to have one for the road before you drive home. The consequences - as they have discovered in the most tragic way possible - could be too horrifying to contemplate. ”
So next time you think you’re safe to drive after a few drinks ask yourself this: Are other people safe if you do…?
Of course not.
Acknowledgments to: Frances Hubbard and the UK Daily Mail.
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