My husband, Roy Read, who has died aged 91, was an accomplished allotmenteer, a keen amateur cricketer, a committed member of the Labour party and a sales rep in the chemicals industry who travelled the country working for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI).
Cricket was Roy’s main hobby. He was a fast bowler for the ICI team and the highlight for him was going to the 1982 Test match in Barbados and meeting such players as Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards and Joel Gardner. Latterly, he was a supporter of his local team, Woodbank, in Bury, Lancashire.
Gardening was another passion and between 1969 and 1989 he ran three allotments at once, keeping the neighbourhood supplied with fruit and vegetables. He would say: “If you can’t eat it, I don’t grow it!”
Roy was born in Salford to a staunchly socialist family - a tradition he kept up for the rest of his life. His mother, Alice (nee Thompson), was a nurse, and his father, Will, a mental health nurse caring for shell-shocked soldiers at Springfield hospital in Crumpsall, Manchester (now North Manchester general hospital). Will introduced Roy to the Manchester Guardian – a habit he kept until his dying day.
He attended Salford grammar school. Alas, his parents could not afford to support him at university so he started work at 16 as a clerk in the chemical department at ICI, before transferring in 1968 to Steetley Chemicals as a sales representative selling chemicals to industry, where he finished his working career in 1987. He did eventually get his degree in economics from Harold Wilson’s Open University in 1972.
I met Roy at his brother Graham’s wedding to my sister Sheila (they said it saved on mothers-in-law). We married in 1969 and – ever the romantic – he took me on honeymoon to the Munich beer festival. It began our lifelong love of Germany and we holidayed there almost every year. Indeed, from 1994 until 2008 he assisted me every September at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where I represented the Guardian giving out complimentary copies of Guardian International.
Roy regarded his pet dogs as his “children”. He had five dalmatians over the years and was known locally as “the dalmatian man”.
Living in Bury for most of his married life, he was a keen supporter of the East Lancashire heritage railway, and his cremated ashes were scattered over the Irwell Valley via the chimney of a steam locomotive.
He is survived by me and three nephews.
