Vincent Curley

If you ever walked down Birch Avenue in Chadderton and caught the low murmur of a story about the old Heyside lad who could fix anything with his hands, chances are someone was talking about Vincent Curley. He slipped away quietly on the 12th of January in Bedford Hospital, 92 years wrapped around him like a well-worn coat, and the town feels that little bit quieter for it.

Vincent's world was always measured by the people he kept close. Edith, his late wife, still lives in the way his sons Mark and Grant tell a joke, in the way their own children, Alex, Ellen and Nathan, scramble for the best seat at the table. He'd have called that 'keeping the tribe together'.

From the brick rows of Royton to the Buckinghamshire lanes of Grendon Underwood, he carried Oldham with him. Colleagues from decades of shifts, nephews and nieces who thought Uncle Vincent's pocket was a magician's purse, neighbours who still swear his greenhouse tomatoes tasted of summer itself, all carry a thread of the same story. A quiet man who listened more than he spoke, but when he did speak, you remembered.

The last farewell is set for half past eleven on Monday 16th February at Bedford Crematorium. No fuss, no wreaths taller than the man himself; family flowers only, then a nod to the charity that kept him company in later years, Age UK Bedfordshire. If you'd like to drop a pound in the pot instead of buying blooms, that'd suit him fine.

There won't be a civic plaque or a road renamed, just the memory of a fella who could wire a plug, calm a crying child, and still have time to watch the dusk settle over Tandle Hill. Oldham's skyline hasn't changed, but if you listen on Birch Avenue when the lamplight flickers, you might just hear Vincent whistling his way home.