We are reading this on behalf on Ian’s brothers and sister who would like to share some of their favourite, childhood memories with you all.
One of Liz’s first twin memories of them both was during the 60s when Calow Workingmen’s club was being built. Now to the twins this was something of great excitement. So much so that they decided to climb over the wall from their house to annoy the builders. Well guess what? It worked! In an attempt to get rid of the annoying 4-year-old twins, the builders decided to give them a can of white paint and a paint brush each. Liz and Ian then decided to paint the back door of every house on their street, as far as their arms could reach. Now for anybody who knew Jim, their dad, you can only imagine how this went down. It ended with Liz and Ian being tied to their clothes post with a washing line around their waist to ensure that they couldn’t escape again.
Richard told of a time when Ian got a new Parker Coat. Ian thought this coat was the best thing since sliced bread, so much so he bet his older brother, Richard, that a bullet (from Richard’s new pellet gun) couldn’t shoot through it. Richard happily accepted the challenged, he led Ian into the back garden and told him to stand with his back to him from the bottom of the garden path. Richard shot him straight in the back making a lovely bullet hole in Ian’s new coat. However, this still didn’t stop Ian wearing his new coat with pride.
Even his Grandma questioned his fashion sense, as they all remembered the time when she laughed so hard when she saw his new drainpipe jeans, that she fell off her chair. Richard and Ian’s rivalry didn’t end there. During a water fight, between them both, Ian was standing on the veranda above the front door. Richard threw a bucket of water out of the bedroom window causing Ian to step back and fall from the first floor onto the concrete path below, knocking him out. Panicking, Richard phoned an ambulance who advised not to move him. Whilst Richard was on the call, Ian came around and tried to find him. Not wanting to get into any more trouble, Richard insisted that Ian went back outside and lay in the exact same spot until help arrived. This resulted in a lengthy hospital stay with a fractured skull and a broken arm.
Ian’s love for driving showed from an early age. The brothers and sisters remember a time when the Chesterfield Royal Hospital was being built, Ian and his friends would regularly sneak onto the building site, which they used as a playground. One day Ian saw that one of the builders had left the keys in the ignition of a JCB, and after some persuading from his friends, Ian jumped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. However, he soon realised that he didn’t know how to stop it, so he panicked and jumped off the moving truck, before watching it plough straight into the builder’s porter cabin destroying everything in its way.
The Waller siblings’ fun didn’t stop there, they fondly remembered when they wrapped Ian in a sleeping bag, padded him out and rolled him down the stairs. Or the time that Ian found a pair of pliers, and wanting to see how sharp they were, he worked his way through the house cutting anything he could get his hands on. Unfortunately, this included the TV cable, resulting in Ian being electrocuted and thrown across the living room – none of the siblings batted an eyelid as Ian flew through the air, they were just mad that they couldn’t finish their programme. Or the time he was fighting with his brother and he stabbed him in the chest with an umbrella.
Not only was Ian a loving brother, he was also a kind, caring and loyal partner, dad, grandpa, son, stepdad, uncle, cousin, nephew and brother in law. All of the family agree that these memories, and many more, will be cherished forever.
