Catweazle's Funeral Celebrations
Where's the mortuary? I called to a passing white-coated doctor as I hovered around the BRI on my bicycle. He pointed, and there down the hill I could see familiar faces. They were waiting around a tandem hitched to a flatbed bike trailer. This was Catweazle's bier. Covered in purple velvet sequined cloth, sporting floating pennants and decorated with yellow flowers and prayer flags, it seemed appropriate for the amazing character that Catweazle had been.
I had only met him on a few occasion. Those were enough. He'd regaled us at the Radford Mill Farm Extravaganza last summer with stories about pushing his wheelchair through London when he'd got stranded at a demo. I'd seen him dancing at the Prom on Gloucester Road holding on to same wheelchair. He seemed an unstoppable character to me, determined not to let his disability get in the way of enjoying himself.
About 35 of us stood around chatting in the group who'd come to see him off on the start of the elaborate and extended funeral arrangements his friends had made for him. We were members of BCC, babes in arms, children, the young and elderly.
And then appeared the coffin, carried across the busy road by a group of friends. There was a solemn drum and percussion accompaniment, with haunting music played on a recorder. The coffin! It was the most beautiful white wooden creation, shaped like an Egyptian funeral barge, with one end carved in the form of a musical stave. There were flowers, a black bow, a motif of the tree of life on the side and delicate writing on panels at either end. Apparently a friend of his, a carpenter , had made it.
We then processed on foot after the coffin, wheeling our bicycles and led by the musicians. We walked in the roadway, the traffic stopping for us, to the Kebele café in Easton and the next stage in the celebration of the life of this amazing man.
Janet Roome
Catweazle (Adam Boreham) has died aged 71. A lifelong cyclist, he made a cycle tour around Europe in the early fifties before taking off overland to India on his bike. He was gone ten years. He spent four years in Iraq and six in India, earning what little money he needed from his skills as a graphic designer.
Arriving back in Britain at the end of the Sixties, the hippie era was in full swing and Cat discovered another talent - catering to the hungry masses. He was involved in various communal/ macrobiotic café ventures and learnt the cooking skills that people would appreciate in the coming decades.
Although Cat's association with Bristol went back to the war (he was an evacuee in Somerset and used to come up to go to the pictures), he only permanently settled here in the Eighties.
He soon became a familiar and colourful figure at festivals, Reclaim The Streets demos, etc. and was always on hand to help with catering at community events and the Kebele café.
After reaching retirement age ( Cat never really retired) , he joined a community living in a secluded valley in southern Spain. His method of travel between there and Bristol was simple: he cycled with his bike trailer down to Plymouth, caught the ferry to northern Spain and cycled the rest of the way. It was during one of these journeys that he had the accident that would put him in a wheelchair. Although a shock to his free spirit to be suddenly so confined, he did not give up but experimented with different tricycles to get around on and was contributing writing and artwork to many worthy causes - including BCC. In fact, a beautiful poster made for the campaign against tree-cutting in St. Werburgh's was widely on display at the time of his death.
