Sharpington-by-Sea is a traditional seaside resort complete with a
Victorian Pier, seafront hotels, crazy golf, the Palladium ballroom, well
maintained gardens, promenade, theatre and illuminations, all the usual things
to have a great time by the seaside, as well as amusement arcades and of course
the Sharpington Fun Park.
The Fun Park was the first purpose built amusement park to open in
Britain, which had an assortment of rides, like the Rotor and the Wild Mouse,
The Cyclone and the Morehouse Galloper, all very tame compared to 21st century
roller coasters, but still fun.
It was also a popular resort for retirees and boasted a number of
static caravan parks and one of them was the
Whitecliff Hill Caravan Park which overlooked the town.
Kirsty Wishaw was
petite and had beautiful straw coloured hair and at 27 years old she worked as
the manager of the onsite Stephenson’s general store.
Stephenson’s had
supermarkets and convenience stores all over Downshire.
Kirsty was a resident
of Sharpington and had worked at the shop since she was at school.
Of course she had help
in the shop in the form of a small group of part timers whom she knew she could
trust which she needed because she had other demands on her time, namely her
terminally ill mother who she had to care for, so the last thing she needed was
another distraction which on one day in the middle of October came in the form
of Phil Spurgeon.
Her eyes were drawn to
him the moment he entered the shop, he was tall and slim with thick brown curly
hair just long enough to cover his collar, with brown eyes and a toothy smile
which lit up the whole shop.
Phil was a couple of
years older that Kirsty and he was a writer who lived in one of the caravans on
the far side of the park.
He was in the shop for
about ten minutes and she caught him sneaking a look in her direction but when
he eventually went to the counter with a basket full of essentials she was
serving someone else, which she later thought was for the best really, she didn’t
have time for such distractions, even very good looking ones.
So she did her best to
ignore him which was difficult because he was gorgeous but she convinced
herself it really was for the best.
Phil would have
heartily agreed with her, he was finding writing his novel difficult enough as
it was without the added complication of losing his heart to the lovely girl
with the corn coloured hair.
He was an accountant
by profession but after his marriage ended he decided he was going to give up
his job and write a novel before life passed him by.
Phil’s neighbours up at
Whitecliff Hill Caravan Park were the Taylor family, who unlike Phil had not
chosen to be there because when they least expected it, life slapped them in
the face and then it kicked them when they were on the ground.
The slap came when Michelle Taylor was diagnosed with breast cancer in January
the previous year and needed surgery followed by chemo.
Her husband Martyn was a self-employed builder at the time with plenty of
steady work and was able to increase his hours to cover for the shortfall.
Then came the first
kick, at the end of February when Martyn was in a car crash and broke his leg.
In June there was another kick, when he needed surgery on his leg after he got
an infection, but most painful kick came in October, when with bills going
unpaid and Martyn still on crutches and Michelle unable to work for several
months because of the surgery and two courses of chemo and with mounting debts
and their savings long gone and no money for the mortgage they lost the house.
So in December Martyn
Taylor, wife Michelle, 9 year old son Sam and seven year old twins Ben and Mark
moved into a caravan at Whitecliffe and they had a bleak Christmas.
Over the following eleven months the Taylor's worked hard to rebuild their
lives, Michelle was declared cancer free and returned to work, and got a job in
Sharpington.
Martyn found another job, not as a builder and not bringing home as much money as
before the accident but it was steady and seemed to be more secure.
The boys did their bit as well by washing cars, cleaning windows and doing odd
jobs on the park.
So by December they had managed to pay off the remainder of their debts and
even had a bit left over for Christmas.
They were doing so well that in another six months they would be able to think
about moving back into a house but then on the 20th December life kicked them
again.
It had been a bitterly
cold weekend with an icy wind blowing off the sea, all of which made it a very
uncomfortable experience to live in a caravan.
So the Taylors had to
employ additional heaters to combat the cold but during the night one of the
electric heater in lounge area burst into flames and the fire rapidly spread.
Fortunately for the
Taylors, Phil Spurgeon had been to a Christmas party at his cousin’s flat in
Jubilee Court which was just down the hill in Sharpington and thanks to an over
indulgence of family hospitality he walked along the prom to clear his head
before going home, otherwise the caravan would have started spinning the moment
he lay down.
Subsequently he didn’t
get back to the caravan until a little after 4am to find the Taylors caravan
well ablaze.
His first action was
to phone 999 and his second was to raise the alarm with the occupants and the neighbouring
homes which could quite conceivably have caught fire as well.
“Fire! Fire!” he
shouted and banged on all the windows in turn frantically trying to raise the
occupants, when a face appeared at the window.
The fire had engulfed
one end of the caravan and had made the doors inaccessible so the big window at
the opposite end became the route to safety.
The only problem was
that the window only swung open about three inches before the catch was fully
extended, so Phil had two choices, either smash the window or break the catch,
so he looked around him to see if there was anything handy that might fit the
bill, but he couldn’t see anything strong enough to break the glass or rigid
enough to lever the catch, and then he spotted the rotary clothes dryer and
quickly uprooted it from the metal socket in the ground and used it as a lever
to break the lock and then propped it under the open window and a grateful and
relieved Martyn Taylor started handing the kids out, and concerned neighbours
whisked them away to safety just as wailing sirens could be heard in the
distance, thankfully everyone was rescued safely but the Taylor's had lost
everything.
Kirsty Wishaw walked
up the hill from Sharpington just after six o’clock as she did every morning
and she was normally the only soul heading through Jubilee Park at that time on
a winter morning but she had seen several people that morning but she thought
nothing of it nor did she give the acrid smell in the air a second thought it
was only when she got into Whitecliff Hill Caravan Park that she noticed blue
lights in the distance and her first thought was a break in at the shop so she
quickened her stride.
She soon realised that
the blue glow from the lights was nowhere near the shop so her curiosity got
the better of her so she went to investigate.
Which was when she saw Phil Spurgeon sitting on the back of an ambulance with a
blanket wrapped around him.
Her heart sank immediately
and all the feelings she had for him that she had been trying to suppress burst
free and she ran towards him
“Oh my God are you
alright?” she blurted “What happened, are you injured?”
“I’m fine” he said and
when he saw how concerned she was for him he knew his novel wasn’t so
important, he wanted her to be a distraction, in fact he wanted her to distract
his socks off.
“Are you sure?” she asked
with real concern
“Yes he’s good to go”
Paramedic Andy Mason confirmed and slapped him on the back in fact over the
next ten minutes a lot of people patted him on the back as they ambled along
towards the scene of the fire, including several firemen.
The Taylor’s Caravan
had completely gone but the homes either side were relatively unscathed, a bit
black and sooty but nothing major, Phil couldn’t get back in his at that stage
because the Firefighters wanted to make sure there was no damaged to the gas fittings.
As they stood looking
at the mess Kirsty shivered and in response Phil put his arm around her and she
liked how it felt, and a few minutes later they were joined by another resident
Ken Baily
“Well done Phil” he
said and shook his hand
“Well done for what?”
she asked “Why does everyone keep patting you on the back?”
“Didn’t you tell her?”
Ken asked him and Phil shook his head
“Young Phil hear
raised the alarm and got everyone out”
“Really?” she asked
“Why didn’t you say something?”
He didn’t reply but
then it was a rhetorical question really, she knew the answer, he was just that
type of person who acts without thinking and doesn’t believe he’s done anything
special because he thinks he has merely done what any other human being would
have done.
He was just thankful
that everyone got out safely but he was desperately sad because the Taylor's
had lost everything.
Being their neighbour
he knew how hard they had worked to get back on their feet after having such
torrid times and as they watched one firefighter raking through the ashes while
another doused the embers it was truly evident that they had lost absolutely
everything to the fire, smoke and water, including all the children’s clothes
and the Christmas presents.
All that remained amidst the ashes were a few scraps of melted toys,
half-burned books and scorched and tattered clothing.
“How cruel” Phil said
“What do you mean” Ken
asked
“I just think it’s
cruel for a family who had worked so hard to be dealt such a blow” Phil said.
“This would be bad enough to endure at any time but just before Christmas just
compounds the cruelty”
“Well I for one will
not be standing for it” Kirsty said resolutely “Come on”
“Where are we going?”
he asked as she took hold of Phil’s hand and led him away but she didn’t reply
because she had turned her attention to her mobile phone.
Kirsty took him with
her to the shop, she didn’t know what use he would be but as she had allowed
her feelings free rein in his regard she wasn’t letting him go.
She opened the shop
and put him to work making a hot drink while she opened the shop.
Once the drinks were
made she settled him in her office, which was actually just a common room,
where he sat in the easy chair in the corner and was instantly overcome be
fatigue and fell asleep, so Kirsty put her coat over him and got on with the
task in hand.
When she was on her
mobile she was calling for reinforcements in the shape of two of her part
timers, firstly because she knew it was going to be a busy day in the shop and
secondly because she had a lot of phone calls to make.
One call was to a
close friend of her late father, Bob Philips, who was a freelance journalist
who worked predominantly for the Abbottsford Chronicle but he also had a
well-read blog.
He was a heavy smoking,
hard drinking down to earth man in his early fifties with a long suffering
wife, Toni, who managed to bring up their three children virtually single
handed and “what you see is what you get” summed him up as good as anything.
Despite all his faults
though it was very difficult not to like him even if he could drive you to
despair.
Bob was a chain smoker
who on more than one occasion had almost set his car alight and apart from the
smoking he was also a very heavy drinker.
He was often heard to
say he had driven home because he was too drunk to walk, though in truth his
friends never gave him the opportunity to be so rash.
Another of his
well-worn sayings was that if he read about the evils of drinking he would give
up reading.
His main diet was fast food and bar snacks in fact he thought that the three
basic food groups were caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol.
His personal faults aside
however, what was undoubtable was that he was a good writer even if he may have
spent more time socializing than he should have done.
He was also a more
intelligent man than he would have people believe, because he found that if
people thought him an idiot they were more likely to open up than if they
thought they were dealing with somebody who was more switched on.
His wife, Toni, had
long ago given up on the chance of Bob writing “the Great Novel” that he spoke
of in his youth.
Bob’s favorite quote
was “Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice;
journalism something that will be grasped at once”.
The second call that
Kirsty made was to Melville’s Holidays who had almost two dozen empty holiday
caravans on the site and persuaded her old school friend Natalie Melville that
it would be a very effective PR exercise to let the family use one of them for
the Christmas period.
“Ok stop” Natalie said
“You had me at “melted snow” and “smouldering wrapping paper”
I’ll check with
maintenance which ones are ready to use and drop a key off to you this
afternoon”
“Thanks Nat”
The third call was to
another old friend, Jenny Rawlings, who she knew would get the word around,
after all the three best forms of communication were Television, Telephone and
tell Jen.
And her final call was
to Richard Stephenson at the company headquarters to get his permission to
donate some food from the shop and she was very persuasive and took her less
than ten minutes to get him to agree, so by the time Phil awoke from his
surprisingly comfortable sleep in her “office” everything was arranged.
Natalie was good to
her word and duly arrived at Whitecliff Hill just after 2 pm and gave Martyn
and Michelle the key to one of the Melville holiday caravans on the park which
they were welcome to use until the end of March, free of charge, which would
give them time to get back on their feet.
The Taylors were
overcome by Melville's generosity but that was only the beginning because Jenny
had done her part and put the word around and in the space of a day-and-a-half,
friends, family and strangers helped the family.
They brought clothing,
footwear, bedding, crockery, cutlery, towels and all of the basics as well as a
Christmas Tree and decorations.
Phil just stood open
mouthed and looked on and when he could speak he asked
“When did you arrange
all of this?”
“When you were asleep”
she replied
“Really?” Phil said in
amazement “You’ve worked wonders, you are a force of nature”
“Not really, I figured
out what was wanted and made a few phone calls and ask nicely”
“And what do you do
when there is something that you want?” he asked
“I ask nicely” she
said slipping her hand in his “and hold his hand”
So due to the
generosity of friends and strangers alike the Taylor's were able to enjoy their
Christmas after all and look forward to a hopeful New Year just five days after
they thought their Christmas dreams had gone up in smoke.
This heart-warming story just goes to prove without any shadow of doubt that the
Christmas spirit truly dwells within the hearts of mankind.
And because of
Kirsty’s generosity of heart and Phil’s heroism they decided that love wasn’t a
distraction after all.
But Kirsty and Phil’s
involvement with the Taylor’s Christmas continued right up until Christmas Eve,
where after having spent much of Christmas Eve in each other’s arms, crept through
the darkness, and left a Christmas sack on their doorstep.
So come Christmas Day
the Taylor boys had more presents to open, toys, games, a Scalextric set,
puzzles, footballs and signed football shirts for their favourite football team
the Abbottsford Knights while Phil and Kirsty spent Christmas Day with her mum
for what was to be their first and her mums last.
