Mm. To go back to the inquest, I got the impression you weren’t very happy about how it was conducted. Do you want to say a bit more about why?

Well let me just put it this way, it was conducted entirely properly in accordance with the precepts of the law as affecting coroners inquests. I did not like the personality of the coroner concerned who seemed to me to lack humanity in dealing with, in dealing with bereaved families. I did not particularly like the police force but these are simply personal responses to people who by their own standards were doing the proper job which the law required of them.

How could, people might learn from this, how could the coroner or the police have made themselves more human and comforting?

Well I have to say that I did meet, I did meet in what, in the, in my early dealings with the coroners office, the sort of retired police officer who you felt very comfortable in dealing with because they, he had the humanity to recognise that he was dealing with a human being in grief.

Mm.

And he to his credit, understood and showed compassion in his dealings. That was not replicated by the coroner himself, or by the police officers who are dealing with deaths of various sorts from time to time as a necessary consequence of their occupation.

Was that by the choice of their words or just their manner?

Manner, manner yes.

Mm, because it’s important we learn from this.

And indeed, yes yes yes. Yes, I have to say that I can remember one retired police officer who was the, one of the coroners officers and he distinguished himself in my mind by the humanity with which he dealt with me, but he was unusual in the context of the people with whom I was dealing at this stage.

So would, would you have preferred, liked the coroner just to have said how sorry he was, or something like that at the beginning?

That would’ve been a help, wouldn’t it?

Mm.

Would’ve been a help yes. It would, perhaps they’re now under strict instruction to do exactly that, but at that particular stage it didn’t seem to occur to the coroner…, you have to allow for the fact that coroners deal with a number of disagreeable elements in society, when I was wheeled in front of him on this particular sad errand, he was probably recovering from some dealing with something even less agreeable, I don’t know.