barman told Alan to take a closer look
at the cash he’d been given. When
Alan did so he discovered his father
had put two £50 notes on the top of
the wad and one on the bottom, in-
between he’d put pieces and pieces of
newspaper. “He’d given me enough to
cover the round I bought!” Alan laughs.
Alan’s wife Charlotte also recalls
Robin’s partying ways. “I have
memories of his latter drinking years, of
him stripping off and dancing with this
mannequin monkey thing. I hate that
monkey – it still frightens me now.”
But then she speaks of the other side
to her father-in-law. “While he would
party incredibly hard and get banned
from pubs,” she says, “he was also
there for everybody. He would help
anybody out of any situation, he was
ever so charismatic, and he had a
great love for his clients – and he was
very for women.”
Alan never followed his dad into the
insurance game. “I’d rather shoot
myself with an air rifle,” he states.
“Watching him go through all the
stress and deadlines he had to meet,
he did get stressed by it all and it was
just horrible to watch.
“I get up when I want, I finish work
when I want, I’m self-employed,
always have been, I haven’t worked for
anybody since I was 19.
“On the back of watching my dad
and grandad having to meet these
targets and just fall in line – I went
completely the opposite way.”
Robin took early retirement once
insurance became computerised.
“When that happened it took the
personality out of the industry,”
Charlotte states. “Robin was
one of those characters who
everybody knew. Every week,
rain or shine, he would knock
on your door because that’s
how insurance was sold then and
people like him were integral to a
place like Carterton.”
Quite late on in his life, Robin
remarried and moved to Highworth.
Robin died from prostate cancer about
five years ago before he had made
it to 70. “From the beginning of the
illness to him dying was about six
months,” Alan says.
Robin Cartwright is the first Carterton
Character that we’ve been unable to
meet. At least there are still those who
can relay his personality and activities
to us, who can tell us of how he used
to refer to himself as Sir Robin of
Loxley when meeting people for the
first time and how – despite angry
periods that might see him launch
a wheelbarrow through the air – in
his role as an insurance agent he did
his utmost to help people out during
times of separation and bereavement.
And as I left the Cartwright household,
though I hadn’t met Robin, I felt I had
met with his eccentricity – a healthy
chunk of it seems to
have lived on
in Alan.
Robin with his father
99
