Bernard Fenwick
Forty-seven, and has lived almost all of his life in Alderwick, a canal town on the River Wend. He spends his days looking closely at old bridges, lock gates and weirs, and deciding what they can still bear.
- Lives
- Tanner Street, Alderwick
- Works
- Senior structural engineer, Wend Valley Waterways Trust
- Family
- Mira (wife), Elias (son), Marianne (mother)
- Right now
- It's 20:39 on Sunday in Alderwick. Bernard is at home, awake.
Where he comes from
Bernard grew up in a lock-keeper's cottage, with a mother who read everything and a father who read the river. It was a household where feelings were shown through jobs done: gates rehung, tea made, lifts given. Nobody said much. Everybody turned up.
He was the first in his family to go to university, and still feels faintly as if he is visiting whenever he is in a room full of people who weren't. He came home to Alderwick afterwards and has never seriously thought about leaving.
What he's like
Reliable, observant and patient, with a dry sense of humour that takes a while to notice. He walks to work along the towpath, makes a decent shepherd's pie, sharpens his own chisels, and keeps a shed full of his late father's tools, with the screws sorted by gauge.
He is better at fixing things than at talking about them, and he knows it. When someone he loves is upset, his first instinct is to make a plan. He is trying, not always successfully, to wait a bit before he does.
His life so far
1979
Born in Alderwick. Grows up in the lock cottage at Saltmarsh, where his father keeps the lock and reads the river.
1987
The Wend floods the lock cottage. He is eight, filling sandbags by torchlight while his father works the paddles all night.
1988
Jonah Price takes his bike without asking and rides it into a hedge. Bernard straightens the mudguard without a word. They have been friends ever since.
1997
First in his family to go to university: civil engineering at Kesterford.
2000
Meets Mira at a house party in Kesterford by telling her that her guitar’s G string is flat. She writes her number on his hand.
2001
Joins the Wend Valley Waterways Trust as a graduate engineer.
2003
Marries Mira. They buy the terraced house on Tanner Street.
2004
Their son, Elias, is born.
2005
His Ferry Lane footbridge opens. It doesn't bounce.
2011
His father dies. Bernard inherits his tools and, the next year, rebuilds the shed to keep them in.
2012
Senior structural engineer, responsible for the structures on the Wend Navigation.
2023
Elias leaves his engineering course to draw, then moves out. Things between them have been polite since.
Now
His mother's memory has started to slip. Work is a lot. He is, by his own account, fine.
The people in his life
From his notebook
Minded to
Last Monday I found out Asha is likely to lead Hollin. She'll be very good. I trained her. I said "makes sense", went back to my desk and worked till half nine, which I'm aware rather proves HR's point.