Richard – Rich, Richie, Dick – was born in December ‘63, the first child of Bill and Ros. He went to Westerleigh; a very old-fashioned Prep School in Hastings and then Eastbourne College as a boarder in Wargrave House. Richard loved his time there and it informed much of the way he acted throughout his life.
At school Richard was seen as one of the ‘cool kids’ – not through any sporting prowess on the rugby or cricket pitches, but because he lived on a farm full of tanks, and was able to chat-up girls. Highlights of his time there included cycle rides over the Downs, smoking on the roof of his house after lights out, and comparing snogging notes with his best mates Adrian and Bob after discos at the local girls’ schools.
Richard met Amy, daughter of Billy Tipples, the landlord of the Six Bells pub, appropriately enough. And in November 1987, their daughter Katie was born.
Not a man to wear his heart-on-his-sleeve, Richard and Katie would get embarrassed when they met up in recent years, and Nicole would say ‘Go on, give each other a hug!’. But Richard adored Katie, and in a rare display of emotion, he expressed it perfectly during his speech at Katie’s wedding:
“As I look at my daughter ‘the bride’ I can’t help but reflect on all the years I was lucky enough to watch her grow and become the beautiful woman she is today. She captured my heart on the day she was born, and I have become more and more in awe of her as the years passed by. She’s my little girl, and no matter what her age, she’ll always be that to me.”
He frequently commented how happy he was that Katie had found Liam, of whom he was very fond, and he delighted in being a Grandad when Ethan was born.
Around the mid-80s, Richard joined Bill in the family business, eventually taking it over as his own. For the Banister children growing up on the farm was an extraordinary place. The barns were jam-packed with tanks, half-tracks, personnel-carriers. To their frustration none of them ever worked. That all changed in 1990, when Bill purchased a Scorpion Tank – a modern infantry-tank, which is in the Guiness Book of Records as the fastest tank ever-produced. To say that Bill, Richard and Charlie were excited when it arrived is an understatement. As the delivery-truck disappeared, Bill fired it up immediately, Richard and Charlie climbed on, and off they sped. It was quick, sooooo quick. It flew. Bill guided it around the fields with an innate skill harking back to his army days, maxing it out at its 50 mph top speed.
Richard’s time working for my Bill was broken every year in September, when for three-weeks he became the Foreman at Nelle Farm, in charge of the hop-picking for Roger Farrant.
In the summer of ‘93, Richard first saw Nicole. Nicole was working as a barmaid at the Club in Sandhurst. Richard knew at that moment he had seen the girl he would marry. Fast-forward nine years, and he did. Nicole finally added some domesticity and order, to his house and to his life, although whether Richard fully gave up all of his single ways is debatable. As Nicole liked to describe him ‘he’s a bachelor who happens to be married’. But it worked.
Richard had many faults – and reading through the very kind messages of condolence that the family received on his passing, they were littered with words such as: infuriating / difficult / stubborn / belligerent / awkward – and that’s to name just a few of the polite ones. Yet every single one of those kind messages then included a huge ‘but’, as they went on to list all of his qualities they were going to miss about him. His loyalty, his reliability, his friendship, his thoughtfulness, his intelligence. You can’t have a ying without a yang.
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Banister’s Military Vehicle Spares
Sales Office:
Quiet Storm Hub,
Talbot Street Whitwick,
Coalville,
Leicestershire,
LE67 5AW
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RW Banister Ltd trading as Banister’s Military Vehicle Spares
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