A Day of Heartbreak

I never could have imagined as I typed my post last week that the optimism I expressed for the future could be replaced so quickly with despair. Friday 23^rd August 2019 will go down in Betley history forever as the day Betley Court burned down.

Just before 4pm, a ‘white-van man’ stopped to say he could see smoke coming from the roof of the house. Residents gardening in the Peace Garden quickly established it was serious, and the emergency services were called by 4.03pm. In the short time before the fire engines arrived, the residents had located my father-in-law, Professor Brown, roused him from his afternoon nap, eased him into is wheelchair and guided him to the safety. For this selfless act we will be forever grateful.

Whilst the Professor was taken in by a neighbour, the fire brigade confirmed everyone was safe and quickly got to work to save as much of the building as possible. Nigel was now on the scene and called me at work to say the house was on fire and to come and collect his Dad. He called me 3 minutes later to say the house was gone.

Driving to Betley with our youngest was an unreal experience. We arrived to find friends in from the village dressed in hi-viz, and assisting the police with traffic. Oh, and how my heart broke as we came around the last corner to see every part of the roof ablaze. We were waved through and parked up as close to the tape cordon as we could. A crowd had gathered, hushed, slack-jawed, uncomprehending of what they were witnessing. I spotted several residents - our friends, the Professor’s neighbours helplessly watch as their homes burned. Hugs were exchanged, no words to be found or required. I was desperate to find Nigel and locate his father to take him to our home and away from all this.

The rest of the evening is a blur of telephone calls, updates and a summon to our eldest to head home from a work trip in Cornwall, and a last-minute dash to buy essential items to deal with the sudden, unexpected arrival of an elder in the household. The Professor’s care team arrived like the cavalry at some point in the evening to settle him into a make-shift bed. Nigel arrived home later still, exhausted, tear-stained and stinking of smoke. We bathed, we talked, we hugged the children at home with us, and slept through shear exhaustion.

While the rest of the UK were basking in the perfect barbeque weather of the late August bank Holiday weekend, damping down continued at Betley Court. Everyone needed Nigel. Everyone had questions. Everyone needed answers. With all our children home, we began taking them over to see the house so that they could come to terms with what had happened, what we had lost. This is, after all where I drove them every week when they were little, to play and have tea with their beloved late Grandma Freda, where they learned the countries of the world from a huge map their Grandad, the Professor had pasted up in the kitchen. The table-football, scene of many epic battles between them and their cousins, gone, along with the dolls’ house, the little wooden harbour play-set that had been passed down from their Dad and Uncles, the staircase we had sleeping bag races down (please don’t tell Grandad!). The vast, charred cavern that had been the drawing room, venue of many Brown family reunions, or “Betley Do’s” as we call them. One of my brother-in-laws put it best as, “that Betley Court is gone, what will the new Betley Court be?”

Its all just ‘stuff’ though, in the end.  I know we’d all have been devastated if just one person had been lost, if one fire fighter had been injured. We can afford to be optimistic about the future because we are not carrying that kind of grief. We have an enormous debt of gratitude to so many people. Those heroic residents, the emergency services, and the wonderful people of Betley village, who pulled together with their willingness to help, and their endless supply of warm hugs and tea. We’ve met so many of you since Friday. I can’t name you all here individually, but thank you for your concern and love.  One thing though, those heroic residents have lost every single thing that they own. One of the daughters of them has kindly set up an internet fundraising page at:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/residents-of-betley-court?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

(If the link doesn’t work, search for Go Fund Me, and look for ‘Betley Court Residents’. It’s the official fundraiser.)

If you think that in the next week, they should be able to pay for new car keys, replacement ID, new spectacles, toothpaste, or a coffee shop coffee, because, you know, its been a rough bank holiday, then chuck a fiver or a tenner or whatever in the tin. It’ll make such a difference.

PS. Someone emailed me, “Terrible to hear about the fire. Such a shame, the dahlias looked lovely on Midlands Today!”