Remembering Louis Fussell- Part 3

Rutland Road, in which Louis Fussell lived in Bedford, and where I lived for around 4 years in the early 2000's, is off Midland Road. It's become very run down over the years. The road is in a sort of 'loop' which consists of Rutland Road, Gibbons Road and Grafton Road. It's sort of cut off from the rest of the roads around the area. It's one-way for traffic, coming in from the roundabout on Midland Road and Prebend Street. There is a bridge that links into Queen's Park and traffic filters in to the roundabout. This can be very difficult if you are driving over the bridge at peak times of the day and I can verify this as I had to drive a minibus when I was working as a carer and collected people from the day centre at the Westbourne Centre deep at the back of Queen's Park and this was always at the busiest time of day and coming out over the bridge could be very slow as the traffic built up back into Ford End Road. 

I had a job in a care home in Everton at the beginning of the 2000's and I used to do early shifts there and I had to start at 7 a.m. if I was on an early. It took me a good half-hour to drive to Everton, driving out of Bedford along Cardington Road  towards Willington and then crossing the A1 at Biggleswade. One particular morning I was caught in the one-way system of Rutland/Gibbons and Grafton Roads. It was the morning the dustbin men were out doing their rounds. I got to Grafton Road and I could see the dustcart ahead of me, blocking the entire road. Those roads weren't really designed for modern traffic. None of the houses had garages or driveways, so the residents had to park on the road outside, or as near outside, their homes as possible. This meant that, with cars parked on both sides of the road there was only a relatively narrow 'lane' to drive along in the centre. With a very large Bedford Council dustcart in the centre there was absolutely nowhere for me to pass. And the workmen who were busy moving wheely bins away from their parking spaces near the houses along the street, to be put on the lift on the rear of the dustcart and then be lifted up and tipped into the back of the wagon. They steadfastly refused to budge an inch, and time was ticking by as I had a half-hour journey to work ahead of me. I just had to wait. And they knew full well I was being held up. Well, they did eventually move out of my way, and I did manage to drive out of Bedford and, as far as I remember, I wasn't late for work either. Just as well there wasn't much traffic on the roads at that early hour.

Louis Fussell was something of a penny-pincher. There's nothing wrong with being careful of your money, of course. He seemed to have a problem with mobile phones. I can understand his generation having a problem with them. I don't think he would understand the obsession with this technology. I have mentioned my concerns with these gadgets, how some people seem constantly to be glued to their smartphones, how you see people walking along the street with their eyes glued to the little screens, either texting or looking at something such as Facebook. I don't think Facebook had started at the time I lived in Rutland Road. I think Louis concern was the cost of running a mobile. He didn't like using the thing. I'm sure he didn't have one of his own. I can't imagine him wanting one. Considering how many miles he rode on his bicycle (see earlier posts on this subject.) I can imagine that a mobile phone would have come in handy had he needed to phone for assistance if he had an accident or at least as a safety support measure. 

I have mentioned elsewhere about how Louis had paying 'guests' living in his home. Myself being one of them. He was never concerned about references. As long as you paid your rent he wasn't bothered. Thinking about it now, I think he was opening him self up to all sorts of problems and dangers. But I don't think he was too concerned, as he ought to have been. When I first lived there he had two young men living in the house. One at the front and the other at the back. One of them absconded, without paying his rent. I'm not sure exactly, I imagine he had back-rent to pay or something. I think he worked for a company between Bedford and Ampthill, I believe based at Houghton Conquest, but I'm not sure. Louis had no car for his own transport and went everywhere by bicycle. He found out where this young man worked (don't ask me how.) and went all the way to his employer's headquarters to try and track him down so as to get the owed money. It seemed to take him a considerable amount of time and effort but he did get the cash eventually. I think perhaps his employers made the young man pay it off directly from his wages, so much a month or something.

Another time he had a problem with his phone bill. He seemed to spend an extremely long time sitting on the telephone in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, sitting on a chair, waiting. No doubt it was to get through to a callcentre or something. I think he was attempting to change his telephone provider and I expect it took an extremely long time for him to get through to the call centre. I can relate to this, as we had a similar problem when we finished with TalkTalk. We had a landline telephone as well as the internet. No, I don't think Louis would ever have broadband internet. Modern technology was far too much for him to understand. Not just understand, but to deal with such things as email, social media etc etc.

As mentioned in my earlier blog posts, Louis was a violin-maker, viola player (in a local orchestra) and wrote music. He wrote several symphonies, as well as other styles of orchestral music. These works were written on reams of paper, although someone transcribed his scores to a computer software system called 'Sibelius,' for which he paid. If he had only learnt to use a computer and then the software he might have saved himself a considerable amount of money. Then he would lay the scores on the floor and go through it all to make any corrections, no doubt in much the same way that an author goes through the manuscript of a novel or other work and editing out any mistakes.

There was one young man who came to live in the house. He had the front bedroom. He was French, and seemed somewhat lost. I'm not sure if he wasn't entirely 100%. He was convinced that his girlfriend was going to come and live with him in the house. Her name was Tina. He kept on and on about her. I can't remember where he worked. Probably for a tempt agency, as I had done for a while. No doubt in some warehouse, picking and packing, unloading lorries or similar. There are a number of such places in and around Bedford, such as Debenham's, Argos etc etc. Talk of 'Tina' seemed endless. He kept ringing this elusive female, but she seemed to be playing all sorts of evasive games with him, to such an extent that it seemed obvious that she had no intention of joining him. At last, after months and months, it appeared that he had found a suitable flat for them to live in, I believe on the other side of Bedford, in either Putnoe or Goldington. Then he began moving stuff across town. But he had no vehicle, neither a van or a car. He had, you won't believe this, a shopping trolley! Now, it must be a good four or five miles to Goldington, and would take perhaps ten minutes to get there by car. He put his belongings into this shopping trolley and pushed it there and must have unloaded it and then walked all the way back to Rutland Road for another load! This was on a Saturday, because I recall seeing him in the centre of town with the shopping trolley, and on one occasion he had the basic carcase of a chest of  drawers in  the thing, and a few house later he'd piled the drawers in the trolley, complete with clothes, all thrown in in a huge pile! I don't think 'Tina' ever appeared and I have no idea whether  he actually went to live in the flat on his own.

Remembering Louis Fussell- Part 2

Christmas at 35 Rutland Road was interesting. I think Louis rather liked the Christmas season. He didn't have any children of his own, and liked to make a fuss of the children of families who had children who came to learn violin with him, together with any other people around him. I was  to learn quite soon that it wasn't to be anything ordinary. Over the weeks of the Christmas period itself he went to stay with friends in Germany, and in the weeks leading up to his travelling over to Germany he made cakes and food, particularly a Hansel and Gretel house made of ginger bread. It seems amazing when I look back on this particular period and think that he made all this in pieces and then packed it up carefully and then took it to Germany and constructed this house over there, quite why he had to do this as it was rather like taking 'coals to Newcastle' as no doubt the shops there would have been full of such gingerbread houses. The cost of taking it on a plane must have been more than the cost of actually buying one in Germany, but that was one of the eccentricites of Mr Fussell. In German the gingerbread is called 'pfefferkuchen' (translating as 'peppercake') or 'lebkuchen' (translating as 'life-loaf.')

In the weeks leading up to Christmas there was no end of activity as Louis decorated the house. He didn't drive, only possessing a bicycle, and to obtain a Christmas tree he went off somewhere to the depths of Bedfordshire (I thinking about it with hind sight  perhaps the Whitbread Estate at Southill.) and came back with a huge Christmas tree strapped to the bicycle. I can't imagine how he managed to ride a bicycle all that distance with a pine tree tied to the side of the machine. Seems incredible to me. He could have had it delivered somehow or got one of his friends who had a car to drive him there and bring it back on a roof-rack or something. But, no, he was obviously determined to do it on his own. Then this huge piece of fir tree was assembled in his front room along with a vast array of ancient Christmas decorations and lights. The rest of the house was also festooned with ancient decorations which had really seen better days. He spent weeks rehearsing this weird Christmas entertainment with the children and this was put on at the party he held in the last week before he departed for Germany. The first year of my time living in the house I was somewhat shell-shocked by the whole Christmas party process, and in particular the strange game he played with the children. I came home one day to find that there were pieces of paper stuck on doors and other odd places throughout the house, with the names of places on them, mostly British towns and cities. My room door had one on it, but now I'm not sure what place it was, Edinburgh or Glasgow perhaps but I can't actually remember. The afternoon of the party I was in my room when the children began to arrive. Part-way through the afternoon there was the sound of children charging up and down the stairs and banging on my door. I think it had something to do with a game where the names of railways stations were read out and the children had to find that station's name on the bits of paper pinned to the doors all around the house, my door included. I soon learned in future years to be elsewhere when this party was on so as to avoid this assault on my room door!

As Louis was a member of the Bedfordshire Orchestra (I'm not sure of the exact name, so apologies if this is wrong.) and during their season of concerts he would be playing viola. On these occasions he would make a great deal of fuss and I occasionally attended some of these concerts, being a classical music fan. He also wrote music and had some of his symphonies performed in Bedford Corn Exchange. He would often have parties in his lounge and invite people along and spent a great deal of time and effort preparing food. Unfortunately Louis's hygiene standards weren't up to much and as a result I think a lot of the food got uneaten.

Remembering Louis Fussell- Part 1

I lived at 35 Rutland Road, Bedford for around four years, between around 1998 to 2002. I'm not going to write about the reason for my living there, as it doesn't have any bearing on my life in this house. It belonged to Louis Fussell, a somewhat eccentric character, aged in his late 70's I suppose when I first moved in. The whole house had been turned over to allow various people to live there, with Louis living in the downstairs living room.  It took me some time to discover that he slept in there, on a rather rudimentary chaise longue. I think there would have been three other people living there when I moved in, but looking back, I'm not entirely sure. Louis was not entirely bothered about his appearance and had a heart of gold. He would do absolutely anything for you, even lending you cash, giving things to people when he no longer needed them himself.  He wasn't bothered about such niceties as asking for references when you moved in, so it's not surprising that there were one or two incidents as a result. Amazing to think that he didn't ask for references when you consider that anyone, a mass-murderer drug addict or any other suspect individual could have been living there and he wouldn't have been any the wiser.

Portrait of Louis Fussell

Credit: Fotdmike/Flickr

One of his major eccentricities was going to Bedford Market when it was closing down, later on, Wednesdays and Saturdays and coming home on his bicycle (he didn't drive and had no car. I can't imagine him driving, which doesn't bear thinking about!) Anyway, he'd come back from his market trips with as much of the left-over fruit and vegetables as he could in the box which he had strapped to the back of his trusty Pashley bicycle. He would then spread it out all over the work-surfaces of the kitchen and sort out the best bits and throw away the really worst, moldiest, rotten fruit and vegetable (which wasn't much, as he would invariably cut out the worst bits.) and some was made into juice which was done using some sort of contraption which was set up on the ancient cooker and boiled and reduced the fruit into this juice. I still don't know exactly how this was achieved. Once he had bagged up the remaining fruit and veg he would get on his bicycle and then deliver these goods to various people he knew all around the Bedford area.

Louis was a violin teacher, but he also made violins in a workshop at the rear of the house, entered through the kitchen and from the side-yard. He also did an amazing amount for charity, working tirelessly to raise funds for various local charities, in particular, the Primrose Appeal, to be run by Macmillan the cancer support charity to fund a  treatment unit at Bedford South Wing Hospital. He could be seen out in the centre of Bedford on many a busy shopping day, standing in Church Square in Bedford town centre, with his bicycle and bucket, and people readily put their change into it. Also, as a member of a local symphony orchestra, where he played viola, he put on concerts which helped raise money for not only the Primrose Appeal but other local charities. He also wrote orchestral works, many premiered in Bedford Corn Exchange. He helped found the Cycling Campaign for North Bedfordshire in 1992. He had a predilection for swimming in the River Ouse, which runs through Bedford. I'm not sure about the legality of doing this, but I don't think he would let that stop him doing that, even though I'm sure it was quite dangerous, particularly as you wouldn't be able to see what was below the water's surface, such things as rocks, shopping trolleys, sharp objects and so on, or even near the various weirs and out-flows that come out of the river.  He rode from Land's End  to John O'Groats several times as well as other long-distance bicycle rides, usually for charity, and in particular for the Primrose Appeal, the Poppy Appeal and other charities too numerous to mention. He sometimes rode around 70 miles a day and was making these journeys well into his 80's.

He was also an avid karate practitioner (do I mean player? I'm not sure of the correct term.) He used to go off somewhere in the town to partake in this and had his own outfit. I believe he got to quite a high standard (Dan? Black Belt? Or is that for Judo?) Anyway, I don't think you would argue with him as he could use his karate to deal with things. I don't think he would, as he was a gentle sort of man and wouldn't hurt a fly. I know he was a vegetarian, so perhaps that would explain quite a few things.

As I've already mentioned, Louis was extremely generous and would help anyone. On one occasion he took me to London to see a show. I wasn't working on this particular day and just happened to be reading a paper and looking at a review of a show at the National Theatre in London. It was for a production of  the Leonard Bernstein musical 'Candide' and mentioned to Louis that I'd like to see it. He said he'd like to go to London and see it, and that he'd try and book tickets. I was thinking, well, yes, but in a few weeks time, perhaps. But he rang up, and managed to book us two tickets for that evening! He was like that, he would act on the spur of the moment. He made himself some sandwiches to eat on the train, as there wasn't time for him to have a meal before we left and then got a train into London from the Midland Railway Station in Bedford. As we went to London on the train, he ate his sandwiches. He didn't make a lot of effort to change, as I had done, and wore his old grubby shorts and sandals. When we got off the train in London, it took me all my time and effort to keep up with him as he virtually ran all over the place, up and down steps on the Underground system, and when we got off the train at Waterloo and on the way to the National Theatre on the South Bank. I was around my late 40's at this time, and he must have been in his late 70's, and it took me all my time to keep up with him! Quite amazing for his age!

We got to the National Theatre and picked up our tickets. Our seats were at the very front of the stage. At one point during the action of the show, the leading actor, Simon Russell-Beale, came to the front of the stage for part of the action of the show, misjudged his footing and fell off the stage and landed on my foot, apologized to me, then got back on the stage! Just part of a live show, you never know what is likely to happen, and any decent actor worth his/her salt can get out of a mishap without too much effort. Not every day you get a world-class actor such as Mr Russell-Beale step on your foot!

It was a wonderful show, and I enjoyed it enormously. I'm not sure whether Louis enjoyed it, but it was the fact that the whole outing was so spontaneous and unexpected which made it so memorable. The incident with Simon Russell-Beale just added to the evening's entertainment, I suppose.

Louis died on Friday, January 25th, 2008, as a result of an accident with a car in Wentworth Drive, Bedford. He is, I am sure, sorely missed by everyone who knew him. It seems particularly sad to think that he rode his bicycle all that distance yet he died so close to his home in Bedford.