Sidney “Sid” Weatherill –My Grandad
Some people seem to have more hours in the day than everyone else.
My grandfather was one of them.
Sidney Weatherill — Sid to almost everyone who knew him — was a farmer, a paratrooper, a scaffolder and, for many years, an insurance agent. He travelled around Whitby on his trusty motorbike, knocking on doors to collect premiums and arrange new policies. He was familiar to a lot of people.
He was also the man to call if you’d fouled your propeller.
One of Whitby’s early scuba divers, he explored local wrecks with his friends, salvaging scrap metal from the sea. If a boat had rope tangled around its propeller, Sid was often the person who would be called to the harbour to sort it out.
A lot of that was before I was born, or when I was too young to remember it.
What I do remember is fossil hunting.
We’d go exploring the coast together, looking for ammonites. I’d bring my finds back and he’d buy them from me, before preparing them and selling them in the shop my mother still runs next door to Furbellow & Co.
Once, my cousin fired a toy bow into a tree and an arrow became stuck in the branches. Sid climbed up to retrieve it. The branch broke and he fell, injuring his shoulder.
For a while after that we worked together opening the nodules to reveal the ammonites. He held the chisel and I swung the hammer.
Hill walking and rock climbing became things we did together too. The North Yorkshire Moors and the Lake District were the playgrounds where he led our family on many adventures.
I remember building a log store and asking him to help me finish the roof. I thought nothing of asking him. I thought nothing of the fact that he simply dropped whatever he was doing and came to help.
I certainly thought nothing of the fact that he spent the afternoon climbing onto that little roof and balancing on the neighbour’s fence to get the job done.
It’s only now that I realise he must have been well into his seventies.
One of my primary school teachers called him Super Sid, and I’ve often said that when I grow up, I want to be like him.
He was fit and active into his nineties. Many younger people struggled to keep up with him walking uphill. He was modest enough not to mention that there was a pair of dumbbells in his rucksack.
He always had a project on the go.
He was never bored.
And somehow, he always seemed to have time to help.
He died last week.
I suspect I’ll spend a long time remembering all the things I thought nothing of at the time.
The Low Tide Line
Some low tides are lower than others.
Revealing more of the shore than others.
The high tide line is often strewn with debris, but the low tide line reveals things that have been hidden beneath the sea.
Sometimes it’s fossils we find. Other times it’s creatures hiding in rock pools. Things that are there all the time, but only revealed when the tide goes out.
It’s been some time since the emotions I feel right now have been revealed.
Grief is a strange thing.
I don’t think I’m sad. I definitely get overwhelmed.
A memory returns, or someone says something lovely about Sid, and a feeling of love bubbles up inside me and overflows as tears.
It’s easy to wish the tide would return quickly and hide what’s been revealed, but it can’t be rushed. I’ll sit with these feelings until life comes and washes them away, until the next low tide arrives.
I’m sure the more time I spend on the low tide line, the more familiar those rock pools will become.
I’m sure some tides will be lower than others, revealing something new.
But it’s a natural cycle.
Estwing Hammers
This is my grandad’s hammer.
He used it for fossil hunting, exploring the coast around Whitby and opening the nodules we found to reveal the ammonites inside.
It’s seen better days.
The handle is worn and the steel has a little rust. But I like it like this. A tool should show that it has been used. This one has definitely seen some use.
Estwing have been making hammers in America for more than a century. Their geological hammers are made for exactly this sort of work — breaking rock, opening nodules and getting to the fossils inside.
There isn’t much to go wrong with one. A one-piece solid steel head and handle, with a grip that makes it comfortable enough to use all day.
I can’t remember when he bought it.
I suspect he couldn’t either.
It’s just one of those things that was always there.
If Furbellow & Co. ever sold hammers, I imagine they would be Estwing.
I’ve thought about framing Sid’s hammer, but I think he might prefer it to be used when I take his great-grandkids down to the rocky shore hunting for fossils.
But I would hate to lose it.
Some tools become part of the story.
A New Arrival
Two days before Sid died, my cousin and his wife had their second child.
A little boy, Eli.
It feels somehow natural to write those two things in the same edition.
One generation leaving, another arriving.
Life carrying on, as it always does.
There are things to grieve, and things to celebrate.
And, in amongst all of it, a new little person has arrived to be loved, looked after and, hopefully, introduced to the world of adventure that Sid inspired us all to live.
Welcome to the world, Eli.
