Uncle JohnA sudden death opens a door to a hidden life...
They say that people take secrets to the grave. As it turned out, we only found out about my Uncle John’s hidden life after he died.
Uncle John was a manly man. An uncle-y uncle. A musty mechanic-y man with a deep passion and interest in scuba diving, spending holidays with like-minded folks on boats, bobbing about over wrecks around the UK and further afield. This lay parallel to his career as a highly-decorated firefighter and Chief Fire Officer in the North of England.
He was my uncle with the noisiest, fastest cars. Hop-up parts, extra gauges, and – because of his job – a clip-on blue light and a nee-nah siren on demand. His messy, yet organised, garage was a place of fascination for a mechanically-minded nephew. His whole house, despite being an urban Manchester semi, was like a dank and oily-smelling big shed full of diving tanks, crankshafts, wonderful metal parts and clobber everywhere. It was great.
Those extensive sub-aqua hobbies and activities were documented in photographic and video archives, noted in handwritten books, and even on a floppy-disc-based database on his computer. Need a photo of a wreck off the coast of Ailsa Craig? A video of a seal on Bardsey Island? An extensive catalogue of images of the hidden depths he spent his free time exploring? Despite the chaos of the workbench in the shed, Uncle John had it all filed away if you knew where to look.
My cousins and I fondly remember him taking us into damp, dangerous, decommissioned slate and gold mines in North Wales, and old factories. Scary, dark, odd places. Places we wouldn’t go to with our parents. All the time driving at hilarious high speed in one of his highly tuned vehicles. The turbocharged, intercooled Land Rover Defender, the Granada estate with far-from-stock running gear. Uncle John was a brilliant uncle.
As he was in life, his death came suddenly, memorably and spectacularly. Falling to the floor, clutching his chest, at the wake of his father. A massive heart attack took Uncle John just hours after we’d been at the funeral of his dad: my grandad. Despite many experienced medical people in the same room, there was no saving him. So as the guests dispersed in a state of shock, with more bereavement than a family should suffer in one day, an ambulance arrived, and relatives took a breath and started the process of planning another funeral and all that entails.
Notable at this point was the fact that Uncle John had never married. There were no partners that we knew of, there never had been. He had many great friends around the country, but nobody he’d shared his wonderfully messy house with. And so, my dad and other uncle headed to his house the next day and made a start on unravelling the debris, finding his last wishes. That’s when things started to change.
‘I found some funny magazines,’ my dad says of this time, ‘that made me wonder a bit…’ And more of Uncle John’s life began to appear to us. A deep dive into a part of his life we never knew about. ‘And then 83 women’s dresses in his size, and 160 pairs of size 11, high-heeledshoes,’ my dad continues. All were stored neatly in the wardrobes of his back bedroom. A knock at the door. The postman had called. ‘Another Grattan package for Mrs Hall.’ But there was no Mrs Hall.
He’d documented everything of course. Colour, style, what went with what. As it was with his last will and testament. A clear layout of who should get what, right down to the frocks and footwear, bequeathed to the Manchester branch of The Northern Concord, a support group for people who want to dress in dresses, in safety. An alternative scene that was such a big part of his life, but one that he’d kept secret.
We never got a chance to talk to him about it. Maybe after the passing of his father, he would have felt comfortable sharing that part of his life with us. Maybe he definitely didn’t want to, but that time to share his story with us didn’t happen. We were left confused with the death of someone close to us, leaving us not just with the memories of how we knew him, but also how we very much didn’t know him at all.
In the 20 years since my Uncle John died, I’ve found myself reflecting on his death frequently. As society is becoming increasingly more open to discussions and expressions of gender fluidity and identity, it makes me sad he couldn’t experience this degree of acceptance. But it’s also entirely likely he didn’t want to share it. Maybe the pressure of sharing it would have been too much. Maybe he liked having a secret. We’ll never know. Certainly what was uncovered about Uncle John’s identity following his death made my outlook on interactions with anyone that I think I know quite different, in a very positive way. Projecting your ideas of convention onto others is a surefire way to offend. Realising that though you may think you know someone, you’ve really no idea what goes on when they go home and close their front door. Or goes on in their head. And that’s what always stays in mine. It’s easier to understand someone who you’re struggling to understand by understanding that there’s so much of them that you don’t know.
So that was my Uncle John. A manly man with a hidden side. A reminder that we never truly know even those closest to us. A reminder that that’s okay. Just as diving below the waves in the sub-aqua world can reveal wonderful hidden landscapes and sights you never knew existed, death too can unearth secrets, passions, and complexities, all still waiting to be discovered, remembered and reflected on.
Words: brant Richards Photos: Hall Family Archive
First published in Issue 1 of Bother Magazine, May 2024.
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