The Pearly Queen who made me feel like a King
KATHY was the most wonderful wife — beautiful, caring and kind. She knew me inside out. If I was in pain, she’d care for me. If I lost something, she’d find it. She was my alarm clock, my right arm, my cook and my ears. I am very deaf and she even went to evening classes to learn sign language, just in case I lost my remaining hearing.
Most of all, she was the Pearly Queen of Peckham to my Pearly King, embracing my love of the Pearly tradition of dressing up in mother-of-pearl decorated suits to raise money for charity. Really, she hated being the centre of attention — but took part just to please me.
Our love story began 41 years ago when I knocked on the wrong door in South Norwood in Croydon. I was supposed to be picking up my blind date for the evening, but instead met Kathy.
We got chatting, and she realised I was deaf by the way I was looking at her lips. She was beautiful, with lovely brown hair, and even before we went out for dinner I could feel something romantic starting.
A year later I proposed, on one knee. I was hoping so desperately she’d say yes that the engagement ring was burning a hole in my pocket.
She was acquiring more than a husband. My first wife, Anne, had died several years earlier and I had four children. Kathy and I wed in September 1978 and honeymooned at Lake Windermere, driving there in my Robin Reliant three-wheeler, just like Del Boy Trotter from Only Fools And Horses. (I even ran a market stall in Peckham.)
I was the happiest man in the world. My children adored Kathy and soon she had two more children to look after — Claire Louise and Sean. She was marvellous, juggling it all, as well as working, first at Lloyds Bank and, until she died, as a sales assistant in the Epsom branch of M&S.
Eventually, we had 12 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. They all loved her and always sought her advice.
She was never once ill. Then, one Monday in February, while we were watching TV, she went into the kitchen, complaining of a headache.
I found her collapsed on the floor. Kathy had had a stroke and died the next day.
Everyone loved her. I’ve received more than 600 letters of condolence. Kathy was a marvellous woman. She was my best friend, my everything.
Kathleen (Kathy) streeter, born august 25, 1947, died February 20, 2018, aged 70.