RIP Jane O'Shea - a truly good person, taken too soon

Eighth day of May (VE Day), fourth blog chapter of May.  We're running like a well-oiled machine here.  I know that (a) I previously said that too much had already been said on Ralphgate, and (b) I said that I'd had my last word on the subject.  But I'm going to have another last word.  The thing was that I read quite a lot of criticism of Ralph after he had been on Luck On Sunday on Sunday, and I didn't think it fair.  So I might just say a few words to redress the balance.  I even read him being criticised for going on the show, which really was unfair.  I would imagine that the last thing he wanted was to go on the show, but once Nick Luck had asked him on, he basically had to.  He would have known that he would have been roundly criticised after his appearance, but that he would have been even more roundly criticised had word got out that he had refused to appear.

Basically, what impressed me was that he had the courage of his convictions.  I disagree absolutely with the core point of his argument, but that does not mean that I dispute his right to hold his opinion.  (If social media is anything to go by) we have become a very intolerant society.  Of course we all believe that our own opinion is the correct one (and I'm generally as guilty of this as anyone) but, even so, we shouldn't have to get as hot under the collar as most people seem to do nowadays if they find someone holding - and, more pertinently, expressing - a contrary view.  I much prefer my father's adage which he used to come out with when finding someone totally at odds with his opinion.  He would merely observe, "Well, it would be a dull world if we all thought the same".

It would have been much easier for Ralph to back-track, and he would have known that.  Much easier for him to tone down his observations and conclusions.  But he didn't.  And, it is again worth mentioning, he didn't volunteer them: he only came on the show because Nick asked him to do so, and the topic only came up because Nick brought it up and started questioning him.  He had no choice in the direction of the discussion.  Left to his own devices, I'm sure that he would have avoided the topic by a mile; but, drawn down that road, he gave honest answers.  There was plenty of sense in much of what he said - and I'm saying that as someone whose view on the main point is diametrically opposed to his.  He had put plenty of thought into the topic, reached his conclusions, and gave honest answers.  And one can't ask for more than that.

And that, by the way, is why he'll be such a good President of the NTF.  In this instance, he was acting off his own bat to do what he thought was helpful, having put in plenty of time, effort and thought to reach that conclusion.  It'll be different when he's the President because, while he will still be able to act as a private citizen and speak for himself, when he's speaking as President of the NTF he'll be voicing and working to achieve policy agreed by the NTF, which won't necessarily be something with which he agrees.  But he's shown he has tireless commitment to a cause, and I'll be very pleased next year to see him championing the NTF's causes.

As I said previously, we just need to hope that onlookers and the media have the intelligence and the integrity not to confuse Ralph speaking on behalf of the NTF and Ralph speaking on behalf of himself.  We trainers all at times like to believe that our own particular policy should be NTF policy (and I'm as guilty of this as anyone) but no two trainers think exactly alike and the NTF is not here to adopt the views of any one of its members (myself included!) but to adopt the agreed views of the consensus of a majority of its membership.  Ralph knows this and he won't abuse the position - but he will, as the effort which he has put into this current issue suggests, work tirelessly to promote the NTF's agreed policies.  Which is exactly what we need.

By the way, I don't only think that he is wrong in his principal conclusion.  I think that he is also wrong in believing that the leak came from the BHA's side.  It clearly came either from the BHA's side or from the side created by him sharing his views with a handful of other trainers.  He's probably better qualified to assess the situation than I am, and he says that he strongly believes that it came from the BHA's side.  My ear is less close to the ground so I should not be in a position to form an opinion, but (as discussed above) we always like to form one anyway; and we always believe that our opinion is the correct one, irrespective of how little or how much logic and/or evidence there might be to back this up.  I can, at least, say that, as a detached (even if uninformed) on-looker, I am in a position to take an objective view - and I am as strongly of the other opinion, ie that it did not come from the BHA's side.

Right, (finally) enough of that.  And this time I do mean it.  I have to mean it because we have something much less unimportant to talk about.  There is, of course, plenty of death around us at present during the COVID-19 pandemic.  And there was considerably more in the six years which led up to VE Day (and still plenty more to come afterwards, including my maternal grandfather who hadn't yet been demobbed a year or so after the cessation of hostilities and found himself in the peace-keeping force in Palestine while the British government was re-drawing the map and creating Israel, where he became a casualty of the consequent unrest).  However, there is still death from causes other than COVID-19 going on; and it's a sobering thought to consider that deaths from, say, cancer, will rise as people, concerned about the chances of catching COVID-19, become more fearful of visiting a doctor or going into hospital.

Tragically, we have had a death from other causes in our parish.  Jane O'Shea will have featured in this blog a couple of years ago when her husband Mick finally succumbed to cancer after an extended illness.  I had known Mick and Jane since he was one of Luca Cumani's head lads while I worked there in the late '80s.  They were the nicest couple you could ever meet.  I can't remember if Jane worked for William Haggas from Day One - possibly not because I think that I remember her working for Paul Kelleway before she was there, and I think that William's first year as a trainer was my first year in town - but she would have joined him soon after the start of his training career, if not at the very outset.

She must have worked for William for the best part of 30 years, mostly as head lad.  She retired early when Mick fell ill, both to look after him and to make sure that they could spend as much of what limited time they still had together together (if that makes sense).  Mick's gradual death took an awful lot out of her, and it has been lovely to see her get her life going again since he passed away.  She's been involved in absolutely everything.  No local charitable exercise took place without her lending a hand.  There was no community activity of which she wasn't a part.  She was tour-guide for 'Discover Newmarket' and National Stud tours.  She was just an absolute lynchpin of the local community, the type of person who made the world a better place by existing in it and made your day better by popping up in it.

Tragically, Jane seems to have had some kind of brain aneurism a couple of weeks ago which led her to collapse at home.  She was found and taken, unconscious, to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.  Attempts through the week to help her to regain consciousness were not successful, and last weekend she passed away.  I couldn't have told you Jane's age, only knowing that she was a few years older than I am.  I am now told that she was 59.  I know that everyone has to die at some point and that there's a lot of death, including a lot of premature death, around at the moment (as ever).  But the death of Jane, a person who spent her whole life giving so much to the people and the community around her and who had endured so much anguish during and after Mick's suffering, really is very, very hard to swallow.