Tonight in a supermarket car park I had a very sobering experience. I was shopping with my daughter in law to be, and we followed a lady across the car park. We loaded our shopping, and as I went around to the driver's door I heard sobbing. I realised it was the lady we'd followed, sitting in her car, and sobbing heart-wrenchingly. She was on her own, and I gently knocked on her door. She wound down the window and I asked if she was alright. She sobbed 'No' and I asked if she wanted me to stay and talk to her - and she held my hand through the window.
She told me she was the mother of Hazel Woodhams - a police scenes of crimes officer - who died eighteen months ago in Norfolk when they took a 'cold' barbecue into their tent, and every so often it just hits her again - and seeing me with my daughter in law had brought it back to her! I talked to her for ages, about her lovely daughter, the fact that her boyfriend (who'd actually been arrested for her murder) almost lost his arm due to falling and laying on the arm for eight hours, causing oxygen to be cut off to a lot of the tissue, and the dreadful aftermath of her death and her understandable sorrow.
Hazel's German boyfriend, Roland, is now starting a campaign to bring it all back to public attention - and I promised that as campers/caravanners my OH and I, and our two sons, would do all we can to make sure sites display notices, and that we sometimes may need to warn the young that this is not a safe thing to do. I felt very saddened talking to her - and it brought home the human tragedy that this can bring.
Please, wherever you go this year, can you make sure that you check notices, warn youngsters next to you of the dangers, and you may just save another death and another mother sobbing her heart out in a supermarket car park.
She told me she was the mother of Hazel Woodhams - a police scenes of crimes officer - who died eighteen months ago in Norfolk when they took a 'cold' barbecue into their tent, and every so often it just hits her again - and seeing me with my daughter in law had brought it back to her! I talked to her for ages, about her lovely daughter, the fact that her boyfriend (who'd actually been arrested for her murder) almost lost his arm due to falling and laying on the arm for eight hours, causing oxygen to be cut off to a lot of the tissue, and the dreadful aftermath of her death and her understandable sorrow.
Hazel's German boyfriend, Roland, is now starting a campaign to bring it all back to public attention - and I promised that as campers/caravanners my OH and I, and our two sons, would do all we can to make sure sites display notices, and that we sometimes may need to warn the young that this is not a safe thing to do. I felt very saddened talking to her - and it brought home the human tragedy that this can bring.
Please, wherever you go this year, can you make sure that you check notices, warn youngsters next to you of the dangers, and you may just save another death and another mother sobbing her heart out in a supermarket car park.