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A tribute by Lindsay and Anita Robertshaw
Photo of Lindsay and Nick
Video, Robertshaw family, Oswestry, England, 2004
A tribute to my little brother
Can I start by thanking all of you who have created and contributed to this wonderful site, who have sent condolences in various forms to Terry and Thomas, to Francis and to me, and who helped to make the celebrations of Nick’s life in Frederick such a remarkable and special event. Though it has come as no surprise to us who have remained in this little backwater the other side of the pond to discover just what a well-loved and influential guy my brother was, the warmth and depth of emotion we have witnessed has been truly stupendous and immensely gratifying. It’s only been today, nearly 3 weeks after Nicky’s death that I have felt able to play and enjoy the CD produced by Ben Brooks that brings Nick’s voice so clearly back into our home.
We still can’t really accept that we will never see him again. This is an attempt to fill out a little more my stumbling public words and include some of the bits that I forgot to say on 8th November.
Nicky was born on 31st August 1951 when I was 4 years 5 months old, and whilst I don’t remember the event itself I was immediately struck by the impact that this little guy had on the family. From an early age he showed a remarkable tendency to want to push the boundaries of conventional behaviour and discover for himself all the amazing things on offer in this wonderful world. I have a clear memory of him, at a few months old, sitting outside in the garden eating everything he could reach – grass, leaves, sticks and even our grandmother’s old cigarette ends. Characteristically Nick even then at that tender age!
Despite any attempts his mother or even I, as the ‘responsible’ elder brother may have made, Nick continually refused to conform. After a time I gave up even attempting, because it was much more fun to join in, play with him and enjoy the added advantage that if we were caught it could be Nicky who took the blame. Like the time he lit an outdoor firework on the kitchen table. “No, I never told him to do it Mum!”
As children we had many shared interests, particularly music, where we both sang in the local church choir in North Wembley. We also shared a vivid imagination and indulged in Greco-Roman spear-fighting contests in an arena that seated thousands of spectators that miraculously appeared in our back yard. Our spears were lethal weapons (far removed from tightly rolled newspapers) and the whole mythical country cheered our vicious onslaughts. We invented a whole mythology around our respective characters, who fortunately, despite severe injuries, had the all the benefits of free and efficacious health treatment. My character was called Pop; Nick was aptly named Shorty!
We both loved the countryside and in particular the Lake District where we spent many a wonderful holiday in beautiful Eskdale. Some time next year we will return with some of Nick’s ashes and scatter them from the peak of one of his favourite mountains, Harter Fell, I believe the last one he climbed in England. We also developed a keen interest in fungi from our mother, and quickly learned to identify the most common edible species, and also those that were not thus classified.
When he was about 12, Nicky decided to experiment with the laws of Newtonian physics. He stepped out in front of a car and continued in the car’s state of uniform motion in a straight line for quite some distance until gravity and friction brought his sudden movement to an end with a leg broken in three places. In the subsequent lengthy encasement in plaster in hospital a remarkable change occurred and my little brother pupated, emerging not as a butterfly but as a miniature Big Nick, with two much longer and hairier legs!
Our mutual love of pyrotechnics branched at about the age of 14 when Nick, now at least as tall as I was, diverted from more innocuous forms of firework manufacture with Sodium Chlorate, to experiments with a lead piping canon with which, I understand, he destroyed a window at Harrow School. We must be grateful that he didn’t blow himself up in the process. (On this occasion I can honestly say I wasn’t even with him, having by then discovered the delights of beer and girls).
A little later, Nick discovered the joy of Morris Dancing and joined the Herga team in Harrow and even introduced his big brother to it, although I was pretty useless. After a disastrous but thankfully brief first marriage he met a wonderful girl called Terry and remarried with a great deal more success! They lived together for a while in Pinner, North London, where, on one memorable occasion, their next door neighbour tried installing cavity wall insulation in the party wall between the houses, not realising that it wasn’t a cavity wall. The consequence was rather a lot of foam in the living room!
When they moved to a quaint little village called Slapton, in Northamptonshire Nicky still demonstrated his propensity for inventing original solutions to tiresome problems – in this case extracting elderberry juice from the berries for wine making. Not content with the labour of manual squeezing through a cloth, Nicky experimented by putting the pulp into a pillow case and then into a spin-drier. The experiment was terminated when, at 1600 rpm the top of the drier flew off, crashing into and destroying much of the kitchen, closely followed by several pounds of liquefied elderberry mush which went all over the place creating exciting redecoration opportunities. We understand that on this occasion “there were words” spoken!
Shortly after that Nick and Terry emigrated to a strange foreign land where people speak a kind of English but believe English people speak with foreign accents. On a more serious note we know he was very happy in the States and really adopted it as his country, whilst retaining his British citizenship. We have felt very privileged on our visits to the US to see how happy he was and to meet some of his many very special friends. The border tour of the Foggy Bottom Morris team in 2005 was a special honour for us and we’ll never forget the sight of the dancing on the lawn at The Old Mill, or the delight on the face of our mother, now sadly gone as well.
Nicky was the most generous, warm-hearted and funny man with an incisive intellect and a rich imagination. He was a great brother and although distance resulted in our seeing less of him than we would have liked, we were very close on the occasions we were together. Although clearly the loss must be greatest for Terry and Thomas, we will certainly never stop missing him, nor will any of our children, Becky, Clare and Hannah whom he adored and who, in turn, loved their uncle dearly and unconditionally. It’s a cruel and unkind fate that has taken him from us so young, and indeed in the same year that he had to grieve for the death of his own mother. So we think it’s ok to curse fate and be angry, but maybe even better, when we can, to remember Nick with a smile. He would have wanted that.- Lindsay and Anita Robertshaw, November, 2007
"This video was taken by Frances Glascoe on March 21, 2004 at Lindsay and Anita Robertshaw's house, The Old Mill Inn, in Oswestry, England. Ursula and Robin Robertshaw, Nick and Linds' parents, were quite alive and clearly robust. Terry and Hannah Robertshaw (Linds and Neetz' youngest daughter) also appear. At the beginning of the clip, Terry notices that Nick is about to have a giggle fit that, thus exacerbated, ensues with a vengeance! Afterward, all the Robertshaws take turns demonstrating their version of "The Robertshaw 'Ahh'" which is a way of indicating that that mistakes were made, a point has not been supported by even a shred of evidence, and that the 'Ahh-er' is just plain wrong! Funny!" - Frances Glascoe, November, 2007
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