Entry – Rocking All Over the World, Status Quo
 
Martin Henry Samuel Frederick Rickards
 
On behalf of Martin’s family, I would like to warmly welcome you to Bluebell Hill, as we come together for a truly uplifting ‘celebration of life service’ for one of life’s characters – Martin Henry Samuel Frederick Rickards. We are here to remember him with love & with respect, & to say your farewells to a much-loved family man who will be sadly missed.
 
Our service for Martin will be a simple, but personal & very caring tribute to him because his familyknows that is how he would want it to be. It will be focused on their memories, & although it is hard to condense a lifetime of memories, Martin’s familyhave done their best to do just this, & I will share some of these treasured moments with you throughout the service.
 
Clearly you will all have your own personal memories of him, & it is these that you must keep hold of at a time like this. Share them with each other for they are the true legacy of Martin and the way he lived his life. 
 
I am a Life Celebrant; my name is Maria Sparks & I would like to thank Martin’s family for inviting me to help them pay tribute to him, it is an honour & my privilege.
***
To begin, we will sing the first of two hymns – Abide With Me. The words can be found in your OOS booklet, & for those able please will you stand?Sing loud & proud for Martin…
***
Thoughts of Martin are uppermost in your minds. His passing has brought grief & sadness to those close; the ties of love remain strong. But whilst we think of his passing with sadness & regret, weshould also recall his life with happiness & warmth. Martin will be remembered differently by each of you as we attempt to celebrate rather than mourn his lease of life with these words …
When asked to write Martins’ eulogy, my first thoughts were where do I begin? His life was rich & full & he filled every single page of his book. And on that note, Martin had written a brief history of his life& times when he began researching his Family Tree. This book has helped me enormously to write the tribute for today.
The prologue of Martin’s book covers his million &one hopes & dreams for the future. As the pagesturn, he fills those empty sheets with his life,experiences, expectations, life-hardships & fears. As time moves on, the pages turn, & his life unfolds from black & white, to glorious technicolor. From these pages, come lifetime relationships & each of them played a part, some with many appearances, some constants, some from the beginning, some transient, & some occasional.
As the years passed, & the pages turned, Martinreturned to previous chapters, only to move on again. Those pages have become seasoned,thumbed & well-read, the contents remainingintegral, true & intact. This book, has inspired &enlightened. And, then the time came to make that one final entry, to turn that last page, but the book will never close. It will remain with those of you who loved Martin, to be replaced on the shelf, as heleaves you to make your own journeys…
So, like all good stories, there is always a beginning, so let’s start there…Martin was a WW2 baby & made his entrance into the world on 19thDecember 1942, at St James Hospital, Balham, in the London borough of Wandsworth. His parent’s names were Daisy & Henry & he was raised with his brothers Max & Rob, who now both live overseas in Australia.
When Martin was a youngster, rationing was still in place & food was hard to come by. His mum kept a couple of chickens, & he was most upset when she told him that one had flown away. To console him, she prepared the family a tasty roast chicken dinner, & strangely enough, exactly the same thing happened with the second chicken. 
Martin’s mum became the main breadwinner, holding down three jobs, after his father had to give up work due to injuries sustained in Greece when he was fighting for King & country during the war.
In Martin’s words, ‘he hated school’, & he couldn’twait to leave once he came of age. It didn’t help that he was bullied by one particular boy, who was mentioned in Martin’s memoirs on severaloccasions & clearly remained a significant presence in his mind.
Seemingly, Martin was a mischievous boy & he never lost that devilish twinkle in his eye, you only have to look at the photographs on your OOS booklet to confirm this. He was notorious for tellingfibs – & I quote, ‘I used to love telling lies when Iwas young as it was more interesting than telling the truth, & of course it got me out of trouble’. 
So, Martin was like ‘the boy who cried wolf’, & when him & another lad saved one or their peers fromdrowning at Streatham Swimming Baths, when heproudly told his mother, she didn’t believe him. That was a lesson learned there for Martin & he vowed to stopped telling lies. 
As a young boy, Martin’s playground was Tooting Bec Common, where he made his own entertainment, climbing trees, playing Cowboys & Indians, football, cricket, conkers & marbles. And he was over the moon when he got a pair of Jacko roller skates one Christmas – they were the Rolls Royce of roller skates according to Martin. 
He had great memories of visiting his granny & grandad at their cottage in Dorset & it was so exciting travelling there by steam train. Martin had an early introduction to the farming life at this time, when on a nearby farm, he fed the calves & rounded up the cattle. He decided at this point that he wanted to be a farmer, either that, or a fireman or a steamroller driver.
Upon leaving school, Martin joined the workforce &had several jobs including working at Bendal’s the sweet wholesalers, & he was a Post Boy. After joining the TA, & having a taste of Army life, Martinmade the decision to put his name down for the Regular Army. He joined the 1st Battalion of the Queens’ Royal Surrey Regiment, & after ten weeks of basic training, he had bulked-up, & with his newly found physic his confidence grew.
Following a posting to Aden, Martin embraced armylife & deemed those service days to be a good experience where the good far outweighed the bad. The camaraderie spirit, & travelling opportunitieshelped to broadened Martin’s horizons. Besides spending time in Aden, he went to Hong Kong & Germany as well. In Martin’s memoirs he wrote, “It wasn’t the Army that made a man of me, I just used the facilities the Army provided to make a man of myself”.
But for now, let us turn back the clock to when Martin met his future bride Diane on a blind date. They hit it off straight away & he knew from the get go that he had met the girl of his dreams. After receiving his release papers from the Army, wedding bells chimed for Martin & Di on 24thOctober 1964 on what was one of the happiest days of their lives. To begin married life, they rented a room in Di’s mums’ house in Balham Park Roadwhilst they found their feet.
 
The two of them soon became three, when Martin & Di welcomed their first child, their son Paul in 1965.As the family grew in numbers, two more beautiful children arrived, daughters Jane & Sue born in 1966, & 1969 respectively. By this time, they were living in a flat on the Downham Estate in Bromley,Kent. But the main family home was considered to be number 71, Geraint Road, & Martin made it into a little palace with his brilliant decorating skills.
 
Martin worked hard to provide for his young family & he had a series of jobs as an insurance man, a lorry driver, a postman & a driving Instructor, before he really found his niche working for the London Ambulance Service. Within his role he had delivered a number of babies in stair-wells, in a taxi & of course in the back of the ambulance. 
 
When Paramedic training was introduced in the early 90’s, Martin put his name down & continued to progress & enjoy a fulfilling career until 1997, when he had to retire on medical grounds due to painful Rheumatoid Arthritis. Some of the highlights ofMartin’s career was attending the Moorgate Tube disaster in 1975, where there were 47 fatalities, & he had his claim to fame appearing on the television news at the wheel of his ambulance. Martin was a hero once again when he was there to help the victims of the Harrods bombing in 1983.
 
Whilst Martin worked hard, it wasn’t all hard work & no play for him & the family holidays were a much-anticipated event. Whether they were at Butlinsholiday camps in Minehead & Bogner, or staying on a farm in Tintagel Cornwall, Martin relaxed on these breaks & they brought out a fun side in him. On beach holidays the building of sandcastles was compulsory, as was a paddle in the sea, provided there wasn’t any seaweed, Jane & Sue both hated seaweed.
 
 
Life continued happily for Martin & Di, with their children growing up, & leaving home to begin homes & families of their own. They welcomed theirdaughter-in- law Cheryl & son-in-law Steve as part of the clan & was over the moon to become grandparents. 
 
Martin was a proud granddad to 5 incredible grandchildren – Hannah, Jamie, Adam, Nicholas & Katie. He absolutely doted on them & with pride he watched them grow. By this time, Martin had most definitely mellowed with age & he was far more lenient with them, than he was with their mum & dad. According to his grandchildren, Martin was an amazing grandad & I will now share with you some of their favourite memories, beginning withJamie’s…
 
Grandad would always make us a tent in the garden when he lived in Bromley, & I still remember it so vividly. It was just some chairs & a blanket but he did it for us whenever we went to visit.
 
Nick went on to say… I always loved it when grandad would ring-up every birthday to sing his silly happy birthday song to all of us & he did it every year without fail.
 
Katie’s favourite memories of Pops include the long dog walks together with Alfie. Pops found a “secret” pathway where we saw lots of horses, flowers &beautiful greenery. He called this “The Katie walk”. In the springtime he would pick me a daffodil to take home. We cooked burgers & chips together & he called it “Mc Grandads”! He was so wonderfully silly. Like when we made silly videos together on his camcorder & he put them on a disc to play to the family like a real movie! 
 
Hannah recalls playing computer games with Pops which was more hassle than it was worth. Healways insisted on reading out the copyright & all the rules of the game before she was allowed to play. This took longer than it would to actually complete the game! 
 
Finally, Adam recalled playing games on the computer with his grandad whilst eating his sausages that Nanny had cooked for lunch, & he was always telling old stories & funny jokes. 
 
And Martin was a great-granddad too to - Phoebe, Luna-Rose, Rachael, Amy & Faith. He adored them all & loved to act daft with them, teaching them silly table manners & jokes.
 
To conclude, Martin’s granddaughter Katie has written a lovely poem…
 
My Grandad
 
You’ve always had a special place, deep within my heart.
Forever there it will remain, whether we are near or far apart.
You’ve always been a favourite to everyone you know.
You’ve always made me happy, with your wonderful glow.
 
The loving & funny memories you gave me, will never be replaced.
Nothing else can ever compare to when I see a smile upon your face.
I want you to know I love you, & you mean the world to me. 
You’re the star I’ll always wish upon, the light I’ll always see.
 
***
There is no denying that Martin was a much-loved granddad & great-grandad & equally so, he was a much-loved husband. Martin & Diane’s lives were intertwined, & they had been through good times & bad, resolving life’s problems with a joke or a touch of hands. Life together was a special thing filled with love & laughter, & where family was a vital component. 
 
Martin & Di made several trips to Australia over the years, to visit his brothers Max & Rob & their families, & they always had such a fabulous time. Martin was very family orientated & kept in touch across the miles with letters & telephone calls. He was quite sentimental in some ways, & for posterityhe had kept boxes of family memorabilia & otherrandom things. And Martin & Di regularly went to Scarborough to visit her brother Keith & his wife Denise, Martin was very fond of his brother & sister-in-law, & vice versa.
 
As a couple, Martin & Di pulled together to care for their youngest daughter Sue, who needed that ‘extra special care’. Their lives were tinged with sadness, & nothing could have prepared them for the loss of their beloved daughter - Sue was only 30 years old when she died. It is not the natural order of things when parents lose a child, & if truth betold, they never recovered from her loss. 
 
Probably, one of the best decisions that Martin & Di made, was to move from Bromley, to the peace & tranquility of Hoo Mariner, they only wished they had made the move sooner. They moved to be nearer to Jane & the children, & with them both being retired, for them no two days were the same. Martin became so much more outgoing & sociable within this friendly, close-knit community & he made the most of walks along the seawall & the countryside views among so many other things.
 
So, it here that Martins’ memoirs more-or-less ended, so I will pick up the threads from there. Of course, the latter years of his life will not be so well documented, but suffice to say, he continued to live a full, busy & active life until he became unwell. 
 
Life is never plain sailing & it was a very bitter blow to Martin & to all the family, when five years ago, he lost his best friend & soulmate Di, his beloved wife of over fifty years, following a brave battle with lung cancer. 
 
Sadly, Martin’s own health began to suffer, when he had a stroke a few years ago & latterly had been living with vascular dementia. Both him & Di had been very well cared for & lovingly supported at home by their grandson Nick & wider family members. When Martin needed more specialist around the clock care, he made his home at Sherwood House Care Home in Rochester, where he was shown nothing but kindness, compassion & good humour by the staff & health care professionals, all of whom took him into their hearts & loved his daft ways.
So typical of Martin, he had to do things in his own way & he was stubborn right up until the last. He chose his time when he was ready to go & it is a comforting thought that he is now back in the loving arms of his wife Diane & darling daughter Sue.
 
Today we have been looking back on Martin’s life with warm appreciation & remembering the happy times you spent with him. Think of his achievements & adventures & the circumstances that led to them. Think of Martin with pleasure & nostalgia as well as the sadness you inevitably feel today. Think of those memorable moments that made you laugh & smile; treasure them & hold them close.
 
Goodbye Martin, you had a full life & I am sure that your family would like to thank-you for sharing it with them & for making their lives all the better for it.
 
Now, you will all have your own personal memories of Martin as we listen to our next piece of music –My Girl, by The Temptations. I hope it will give you a little time to reflect & to remember Martin as you knew him, & then perhaps, he will not seem so very far away. 
***
Martin had his own beliefs & he was respectful of others’ faith, so, with that in mind & the comfort itmay bring some, I will say a short prayer…
Indian Funeral Prayer
When I am dead, cry for me a little
Think of me sometimes, but not too much.
Think of me now & again as I was in life
At some moments it’s pleasant to recall
But not for long. Leave me in peace & I shall leave you in peace,
And while you live, let your thoughts be with the living.
***
As we near the end of our life celebration servicefor Martin, we will sing our final hymn… Amazing Grace. The words are in your OOS booklet, & please will you stand?
***
How do you do justice to recount a man’s lifetime of experiences & memories in a few short moments? I don’t think you can, but for those of you here today it’s clear that Martin made an impact on your lives & that speaks volumes in itself.
On 12th January 2023, Martin laid down his sword & picked up his wings. The sadness you feel now; you can afford to hold close; safe as you are in the knowledge that grief is love’s echo. You only have to listen & it is there. 
Today your hearts are heavy but this is just an aftershock. The earthquake, the main event as ever is the price you pay for love; the love you all had for Martin. 
***
Family & friends, we have now reached the time in our service when we say our final farewells to Martin. Here in this chapel now filled with your warmth & your love, I respectfully ask for those able, to please stand?
Martin, wherever you may be, we hope you are in a place of warmth & light, in good company, we hope you are well, smiling & happy, reunited with those you love who have gone before you. 
Today we remember your life &, though we aresaddened at your passing, we look back & are grateful for all we shared. Until such a time comesthat we may see you again… be free… be proud of who you have been & know you will be loved &missed always. Rest now, peace be yours.
And so, we come to the end of our service today, but of course our time to remember Martin only begins here & what an incredible life there is to look back upon.
There are some in the world who aspire for more than they have...for life to be more than it is…but Martin enjoyed his life & was more than happyspending time with his family & good friends, thank you for the days of laughter shared with them - nochances missed or days regretted - content. What more could one hope for?
As we prepare to leave the chapel, we will listen to our final piece of music that Martin chose himself –Sixteen Tonnes, by Ernie Ford. As you leave, please take with you your own memories of a no-frills, no-fuss family man who can never be replaced – Martin Henry Samuel Frederick Rickards.