Longtime Ago People
In a world where family connections shape us, stories bridge generations. Many of us carry cherished memories of those who touched our lives, which I think deserve to be shared.
Each episode I hope will feature guests recounting touching, funny, and inspiring memories, celebrating the impact these individuals had on their lives. I aim to beautifully remember loved ones, offering listeners nostalgia, warmth, and connection.
I am looking for people to reflect on the impact of these relationships.
Longtime Ago People
Hole-in-One: Family Memories and the Loss That Changed Everything
Simon Redhead - Andy 1957
brothers
What happens when the quiet cornerstone of a family disappears? I speak with Andy about his younger brother Simon — a man whose life, and sudden death, left a lasting imprint far beyond what anyone had imagined.
Simon grew up in Leeds, surrounded by teachers, and went on to become a much-loved PE teacher himself. It wasn’t until his funeral, attended by hundreds of former pupils, that the full extent of his influence became clear. “The place virtually came to a standstill,” Andy tells me, describing mourners packed “up in the rafters.”
Though five years apart in age, the brothers grew close over time, bonding through sport and their shared devotion to Everton. Andy’s recollections of 1960s Yorkshire are vivid — seaside holidays in Filey and Scarborough, pushing prams to school, and kicking footballs down quiet streets where “you could stop every five minutes when a car came along.”
But it’s Simon’s character that lingers most. Andy describes him as the family’s mediator — someone with “no isms or ists,” who could “look at things from other people’s hilltops.” He was the quiet strength that held everyone together.
When I ask Andy what he’d say if he had one more conversation with Simon, his reply is heartbreakingly simple: “I would ask him to help me.” A decade on, he still misses Simon’s calm wisdom, admitting he’s “about two out of ten compared to his ten out of ten” when it comes to resolving family tensions.
This conversation left me asking: What legacy do we leave behind? Who will remember our best qualities when we’re no longer here to show them? Perhaps it’s the quiet, everyday kindness that endures longest.
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Have a story echoing through time? I’m listening—300 words or fewer.
"In a world where you can be anything, be kind."
you're listening to miles, and this is long time ago, people. Today I'm with a good friend of mine called andy. Where do you live?
Speaker 2:I live in a village near shipston on stowell which is in the sort of tip of the cotswold, and that's why we're meeting at the halfway point in newbury today.
Speaker 1:So today we're going to be talking about your brother, simon. Can you take me back to the beginning? Just tell me what was your earliest memories of Simon as your younger brother?
Speaker 2:The very earliest memory of Simon was actually his afterbirth. He was born at home, 42 Chatsworth, present Pudsey, leeds, on the 29th of October 1962. So I'd have been five years old and it was late at night, I'd guess about 10.30, 11 o'clock. He was born and they basically put his afterbirth on the fire. So that was marriage. I'll never, ever forget that as long as I live. I don't think I will either. He sort of came off the scene with a bit of an announcement, shall we say.
Speaker 1:For sure Anything else other, when you were perhaps a little bit older, or he was a little bit older I have two brothers.
Speaker 2:I have paul and I have simon. Simon was my, so I was the eldest, simon was sort of five and a half years after and then paul was about five years after simon. So we span nearly 10 years from the eldest to to the youngest. I suppose really the reason I said that when I relate to simon, of course it's a bit different because when I was starting school he'd just been born. When I was going up to grammar school, as it was, he was just starting primary school, whereas there was a bigger gap between the ten. So I do have a lot more sort of memories of that sort of time of him being around. I remember clearly having a younger brother who was boisterous and sort of got stuck into everything. I suppose I looked forward to having a young, a younger brother and it was quite nice when one came along, really nice, close family.
Speaker 2:Remember going on on on holidays to um filey and and scar because that's what you did when you lived in leeds yeah, in the caravan, as a lot of us did, on a sea view caravan park. I remember that bit fish and chips and jimmy corrigans and god knows what else. It was also the year I went to school and I remember a Seaview Caravan Park. I remember that bit, fish and Chips and Jimmy Corrigan's and God knows what else. It was also the year I went to school and I remember basically my mum used to push his pram with me, holding onto the pram with me walking when I got to school, obviously sort of like I just ran into the. I did that not to get rid of him, but just because I was fed up of holding on to these prams.
Speaker 2:There was a busy main road that we used to walk across. Silly little memories of things, but they seem like two minutes ago. Was there any particular routines that you had to get? My dad was an LTA coach, so my dad taught me to play tennis. I remember him coming then, but I think that was more because basically my mother wasn't at home, so he just came and sat and watched around the outskirts of the tennis court.
Speaker 1:But came and sort of like, sat and sort of walked around the outskirts of the tennis court. But it was probably later on in life, where the five years got less, as if you got older, that we became close. Later in life he became a much beloved teacher. Was there anything in his childhood that you could look at now and think, well, he was definitely going to be a teacher mum was actually on the stage at one point.
Speaker 2:My mum became involved in education. My dad was head of science in a large comprehensive school in pudsey, west yorkshire my dad's actually, I've got to tell you it always makes me smile. It makes me smile because I remember simon couldn't understand this either. Evidently my father got offered a head of science in pudsey and a head of science in guernsey and he chose pudsey. So he's the only person in my life I mean, simon, you said I thought you'd just going Pudsey, guernsey, pudsey Tough choice. He chose Pudsey, I remember. But I think that was partly because of the fact that they planned on having three children and they felt it was best to grow up, if you like, in somewhere which was more populous.
Speaker 1:He was obviously clearly into sports as well.
Speaker 2:Talk to me about the sports. Where did that start? Where did that come from? Well, that all came probably from football. But also, just to confuse anybody, I was actually born in in liverpool but left liverpool when I was quite young. I was just about one year old and we moved across to yorkshire. Obviously, simon wasn't born at that particular time.
Speaker 2:My mum's brother, uncle Stan, who we were all very close with, he too was a headteacher, but he actually ended up being a headteacher in Milton Keynes.
Speaker 2:He was a mad, mad Evertonian because my mum supported Liverpool made sure that both Simon and I had been sort of taken to Goodison Park and sort of indoctrinated before my mum could make any changes, and that was his first sort of like thing.
Speaker 2:I think I first went when I was about two years two months and I think simon first went when he was fully enough about two years two months and and so it was. It was kicking around a football, basically in the days when you could actually kick it around in a road that wasn't busy enough because you could stop every five minutes when a car came along, whereas now on that same road there'd be a car every five seconds. So it was those sort of things that probably sort of got him involved in sport in the first place. He was a PD, so that's where he ended up, I say to the best of my knowledge that was his title. He played rugby for Mansfield, but I think that was sort of on a bit of an ad hoc basis. He was a good sportsman and there wasn't many sports he couldn't turn his hand to and do reasonably well or better.
Speaker 1:Basically, you once said to me once that you had a good relationship with your own children, especially your sons. Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Well, my son's mentally handicapped. He's 44 now. My daughter has just turned 40. You know how sort of time flies. But all the kids in the family who are now all sort of like 30, 35 or whatever.
Speaker 2:Basically simon held the family together more than I did. If I'm honest, simon was the one who could, uh, look at the world from everybody else's hilltop and not just his own. And he also had skills children when they were growing and learning that I didn't realize where he got it from until after he died. I basically basically saw. Even from some pictures you could just tell that he had a gift for actually sort of passing on. So he did that basically within the family, which worked very, very well, probably something he picked up from my father, uncle Stan, who I've mentioned before, the one who was the head teacher. Funny enough, uncle Stan's son became headmaster as well. So there's a lot of teaching sort of backgrounds to be in the family. I can gather that now.
Speaker 2:I think I decided probably earlier on. It wasn't for me even from a very early age, but Simon obviously did. But I didn't really realise it, as I said, until I saw some of the people that he taught and pictures after he'd sort of passed just how good he obviously was with children learning and then children most, most of the children that he taught, I believe, was sort of, you know, between the age of 11 and 18. I can't remember him teaching any anywhere else. I'm thinking it's pretty much the same school, but obviously I'd pick things up from other members in the family, probably from my mother.
Speaker 2:So with him I think it was just bits of everything and and I think he just knew he got a talent. He's physically very good and when you do see some of the pictures, I think some of the things I saw that I didn't realize that he did, as it were, before. It was the warmth that he had. It was, he was a genuine interest. He was wasn't doing it for his own means and and he always, I think, did it for for getting the best out of the kids and other people. I think that was one thing that he did in all his life. It was never about him. He was quite happy for him just to sort of, you know, take back seat, and he actually quite enjoyed other people achieving doing things well, obviously there was a suddenness to your goodbye with him.
Speaker 1:What sort of difficult question, and but what sort of feelings and thoughts surfaced in you in the first days after he died that is a very good question, because the the honest answer to the question is that the shock was obviously sort of one unexpected.
Speaker 2:Two, when I found out more about the circumstances. Probably three, just the realization from going from where I was with, which was actually at my office at home, yeah, but his lunchtime, everything was fine, and 4.30, 5 o'clock in the afternoon I was sat in the house where he died. I remember getting a phone call from Laura, his niece, his daughter. What she didn't tell me at the time was she was living when he actually died and basically that's something that she's had to live with for those years. She's very strong but nevertheless for anybody that's a lot to take on.
Speaker 2:So I remember the phone call from her, some real bolt out of the blue, a real shocker, very sudden, obviously Well to say obviously. It was an aneurysm to his heart, so nobody was expecting it. The realisation of what actually happened sort of folded out and became a little bit clearer, but it was almost like living as if it hadn't really happened for some time, maybe a month or so. And also at the time, unfortunately, he couldn't do his funeral for quite some time because of the circumstance. Particular point talking about the funeral, there was hundreds of people.
Speaker 1:I mean, was there anything on that day that came out that surprised you, that that people just talked stories about him?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think the impact of how many people turned up, the place just about did come to a standstill. We're one of the last ones to arrive and even as it were in the formal card, it was difficult to find a space to actually get in and it was just the dawning then of how much of an impact it had on so many people's lives. The place virtually came to a standstill. And then when we walked in of course because it had been last to arrive it was just hit with the amount of people that were there. It was almost like they were up in the rafters, you know, sort of wherever you looked there were a lot of people. So he obviously touched a lot of people very, very closely and made an impact on their lives which was really quite touching. I didn't realise just how much. I guess most of them were students I think they probably were, but then some of them were fathers and mothers of children and they were all being students. So there was like two or three, maybe a couple of generations.
Speaker 1:Generations of students, yes, generations of students. Have you got like your own personal favourite memory of him Hole in one, hole in?
Speaker 2:one. Hole in one. Yeah, really the hole in one and a little incident that happened watching football. The hole in one would have been a couple of years before he died, maybe 2011, 12. The club where I play.
Speaker 2:He came with Jonathan, his son, my nephew and the three of us were playing and the hole is a par three and basically, if you picture it, it's like a saucer that's on a sort of small hill but it's got a surround around it, so like a bank of grass. One way to get a hole in one of those is just hit it too far and if you hit it far enough, it'll roll down this bank, roll back onto the green and you never know, it might just roll into the, into the flag, and he did that and it was just incredible. So he said what do I need? I said, well, you hit it a bit far, does this? I'd explained all of that and that's exactly what he did. This ball hit literally about you know, 50 seconds after. I'd sort of explained what people do try to do and it actually happened and went in and it was just an unbelievable moment. So that hole hole in one. Now, I've never got a hole in one anywhere, but I keep trying to do what he did and he's only played the thing one time and then literally did it on that particular one. The fact that Jonathan was there as well. I'll sometimes just sort of send him a picture when I'm actually on the tee or whatever, or just drop him a quick message just saying on the 11th tee we're signing up the hole-in-one and then the.
Speaker 2:The other one was part of a story that actually told in his funeral. We were, we were at an Everton West Ham game and it was the one where Paolo Di Canio had basically the goalkeeper at the time of Everton injured himself. Canio had got the ball from his fumblings and, rather than putting the ball in the net because the keeper was injured, he kicked it out so that the keeper could get treatment. However, there was another little incident and basically what had happened was that just before bearing in mind you're in on Merseyside, there's some scouse sense of humour and straight talk and so on and so forth, and we're in the children's bit I think they were that used to it. They didn't even notice it at the time, but me and him just thought it was hilarious the linesman didn't give a throw to Everson.
Speaker 2:That was obviously a throw to Everson. He gave it to West Ham, to which this guy about three rows up starts effing and jeffing at the linesman. Blind swear word blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Basically, another guy who was about a row in front of us, just to the right, stood up and says hey you, effing, effing, effing, yeah, don't swear in the kids bit, don't swear in the kids bit, don't swear in the kids bit. And I couldn't believe it because it literally the amount of effing and jeffing that came out from this guy was more than this guy, because everybody thought it was quite funny.
Speaker 2:I remember just looking at Sam and it was a look as if to say you wouldn't get this anywhere else apart from sort of yeah, on Merseyside or whatever, yeah, but they went all the time. He was much more into the football, I think, than I probably ever was. He took it very seriously. I think Jonathan and him were seasoned to the oldest for a long, long time, the sort of sporting connections from that when he was doing his PE and so on and so forth. Again you could see sort of what he'd nurtured and what he'd built with other kids, if you like, in that sort of area.
Speaker 1:Talking about his legacy, is it anything that he's left? I mean, obviously he's got two children. There's your kids. What do you think his legacy that he's left behind would be for them?
Speaker 2:It's a massive miss because, as I said, he had the ability to sort of look down on things and view things from there other people's hilltops as opposed to just his own.
Speaker 2:I think he was the calming influence, if you like, in the family. He was very tolerant, he could be very wide-ranging in his views. He got no isms or ists in him, whoever, and he was quite sort of he was a strong, silent sort of type, whereas I very active, very busy, probably much more ambitious, if that's the right word, much more aspirational. He was aspirational just that everybody around him was happy. That was his sort of aspiration, including the kids. And then with Paul he was again sort of probably different to Simon, different to me in his own kind of ways. It's one I can probably only really answer for my own children.
Speaker 2:Tim, my son, who's mentally handicapped yeah, he started off something which kept people going down to see Tim. He was very sort of regular. In the amount of times that he did it, I would say the biggest thing is, broadly, he's the key family member that would have. Our family would probably be different if he'd have lived for the last 10 years because he was the one who could influence things. I think the children saw that and got that, but you've also. When he died they were all young adults, mainly around in their 20s at that particular time, so they'd all grown sort of reasonably sort of close together. I suppose his influence was strong, but silent, but very present, so very, very much missed.
Speaker 1:If you could ask Simon what his proudest achievement would be, what would that be?
Speaker 2:I actually think it would be the influence that he had on the children, I think without a doubt. I said he lived and he was happy, with other people being happy, but obviously the children and the sort of family, as it were, came first. Even if you go back to those days when you know he was, say, six years old and and I was 11, 12 or whatever, even then was more of an interest in what you were doing. You would probably ask him anything but he would always sort of be interested in what you were doing. I definitely think it would be what he gave the family, but but obviously his own sort of family first. They are an absolute credit to him. I mean, if you're looking at things where you've got max and jamie, the grandchildren yeah, so he, he died before, basically, they were born both of them.
Speaker 2:It's such a pity because what is probably answering your question is what's missing for them. Yes, what really it is is that it's a wise man, somebody who's very tolerant, somebody who was just quite relaxed, very sort of in control, who was interested in just about everybody who he met. Yeah, he could obviously sort of in control, who was interested in just about everybody he met. Yeah, he could obviously sort of teach and do it very well. He could evidence that by the amount of people that come in. So he was good at helping reconcile things. He was good at getting hold of situations that maybe we've had in the last 10 years and maybe this is we as a family have had that haven't been resolved. That probably would have been resolved if he had actually been with us during that time. Very special sort of abilities, but quietly spoken, and he would never advertise the fact. He'd just be strong and silent.
Speaker 1:So how did he get to that position in your family? If you say that, you know, are you and Paul completely different and he's in the middle, or yes, I think there's an element of that and I think Paul would agree with that.
Speaker 2:I mean, paul and I get on quite well now, but I mean I think when I mentioned before that you know, at the age of five I was sort of 15, 16. Yeah, at the age of 20, when I was out working in well, when it buried at the time North Manchester, liverpool, but he was just starting, so I started school, secondary school, whatever. So we had less there. That was actually sort of there was less in common. That was just because of where we were in our particular ages, as it happens.
Speaker 2:I mean, we've got to be quite close again now and it'd be nice to be closer. Do you live close? No, so Paul still lives in there. He lives very near Leeds Bradford Airport. He's on the outskirt of Leeds and has been there for in the area all of his life. He's the only one out of the three of us who stayed, if you like, where he was actually sort of put. But we're going well now. Um, I think the thing with there's nothing wrong with being different. I think what simon probably had, that I didn't and maybe paul didn't, was the ability to actually understand that that people can have different views and do different things and it's all fine, but you have to look at it from from their perspective and that you're not always right. I'm not always right if I'm thinking about things or whatever, or people can have a different view, or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's probably about it, okay. Last question probably a tough question as well, really. If you could have one more conversation with him, what would you say or ask I?
Speaker 2:would ask him to help me. I feel I think the bit that I missed from Simon. What's been lost is that we talked every day. I mean and that's not much of an exaggeration, I would say if there's 365 days in a year, we probably talked on 350 often. We talked a lot.
Speaker 2:There are things where I think we would have found ways to resolve things and resolutions and these are probably sort of family things With his involvement that I haven't got the skills to do. I'm good in business confrontation or when there's differences or when there are things that need talking about and sorting. He was very, very good at sort of being the one who was the person who got some clarity from the confusion that stopped things sort of happening, which may be sort of things that you want to work out a bit differently, or whatever. People getting on with each other, rifts, as it were. Rifts is a very strong word, but, but basically he would be always somebody who I wish I could actually have right now to help me do things as well as he would do in those situations, because he was obviously very special at doing it, um, but I probably get about two out of ten compared to his ten out of ten.
Speaker 2:Okay, andy, I'd like to thank you very much for your time today, but I probably get about 2 out of 10 compared to his 10 out of 10 10 out of 10,.
Speaker 1:Ok, andy, thank you very much for your time today. Bye.
