About Neal

Please excuse my following angsty post.

Neal's funeral was yesterday. I was so glad to get it all done with.

Basically, he was doing his usual job at the quarry and was asked to clean out one of the sand silos which feed the raw material into the concrete mixer, or something like that. He was hanging from a rope cradle when that failed and should have been caught by his safety line. However, for some reason that failed.

The safety equipment failed for both him and a colleague. His colleague was able to scramble to safety but Neal went underneath the sand (I suppose that you can't swim in sand) and asphyxiated.

The accident happened at about 8:30am but they didn't even find his body until around 2:30pm, which is when they were able to inform my sister.

My mum rang me in the evening and I knew straight away from her voice that something major had happened, and to be honest I thought that she was going to say that it was one of my grandparents. I never expected her to say the words "Neal's dead".

I cried for most of the weekend. I've been fairly lucky really, the last major death in my family was when I was about 7 or 8. Since has only been aunts and uncles that I didn't really know well enough to only feel sadness for the family members that did know them well. And honest to god, I never knew that crying could hurt that much, and that a death in the family could hurt so much. I never want to feel like that again.

I felt angry that my sister and my two nieces had had him taken away from them. I was angry that the safety equipment failed. Neal was always a risk taker (we all said that if he was to die young it should have been in a motorcycle accident or something like that) but he knew the boundary. He used to fix my car with a fag in his mouth, oil down his arms as he grappled with whatever he was fixing. But when we came to a part where we needed to take a precaution he would say to me quite clearly "you don't fuck about with this part Rob". My mum told him off many a time at the petrol station for smoking on the forecourt. He argued that that's what all the metal shielding around the pumps was for.

I cannot believe that him and this other guy hadn't put on their safety equipment correctly, not when he's hanging from a roof. And this safety equipment was inspected just the week before. So to me, someone is to blame.

I was going to go into work on the Monday, I even had my lunch box made up. But I just couldn't motivate myself in the morning after a terrible night of sleep so rang my boss. He was most understanding and told me to take some time off to head home and clear my head. It really helped to get home and see my family, it is probably the first time since I moved away from home where I felt truly isolated and miles from anyone I knew.

Over the coming week I was to be further angered when the stories about the incident started to reach the media and the quarry owners expressed "deep regret" about it and offered condolences to the family... when they hadn't even picked up the phone and rang my sister (at this point, most people argue with me that maybe they couldn't as it could prejudice any investigations. The police have stated that this is simply not true and offering condolences is in no way an admission of guilt. They told us this when they expressed surprise in hearing that they hadn't been in touch to express sympathy). In the end, they phoned my sister six days later.

I was also angered that they told the media that they had offered counselling to the friends and family. They did nothing of the sort.

Other quarry workers were much more on the ball. One random quarry in Wiltshire heard about the accident on the grapevine and used their contacts to find out my sister's details and all chipped in to buy her a huge bouquet of flowers and have them couriered to her. In comparison to the site owner's six days to make contact, this random group of strangers got the flowers to my sister in just two days.

My sister also received a letter from one of those trashy women's weekly magazines. "Sorry to hear about the death of your husband. Sell your story to us and we'll give you £250". This was before he was even in the ground.

The weekend after this it was also my nieces' 4th birthday. They decided to hold her party as normal and it went quite well, though I couldn't help realising that this will be the first of many events in his daughters' lives that Neal will miss. I think next Christmas might be difficult.

Anyway, the current state of play is that the Health and Safety Executive are all over it, but it could be two to three years before the case goes to court.

The funeral itself seemed to fly by. My sister decided that it should be no suits as Neal hated wearing suits. I drove behind Neal to the crematorium, at first I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to manage it as all the emotion hit me again when I saw the hearse pull up with his coffin in. I had made a music CD up at the request of my sister for when everyone arrived and left. The entrance was, quite aptly for Neal, Prodigy's Firestarter.

It was also lucky that we followed Neal in as over a hundred people turned up for the funeral. We followed the coffin in and everyone else had to stand where they could once all the seats were full. Some people were even left outside.

Then at the wake my mother was doing her usual fretting that she hadn't prepared enough food. She does it at every family event, whether it is a wedding, christening or a funeral. And of course, there was loads left over.

So like I said, I'm so glad that's all over and we can now set our sights on ensuring that answers come from this tragic accident.