A book for Christmas

If you answered a knock on your door at Christmas time, and found a homeless man standing holding a frozen chicken and a bag of clothes, what would your reaction be? For Rob and Dianne Parsons, it led to a life change so profound it altered the course of their lives, and to their setting up a charity that helps thousands of others. Although the knock could have come at any time in the year, the fact that it came in this season gives the book a warm, Christmassy air and a deep resonance with Matthew 40.

As a young man Rob Parsons was training to be a teacher when, after giving a talk to the youth in church he was approached by John Loosemore, a lawyer who had recently started his own practice. (Loosemore solicitors became a ‘name’ in South Wales.) He said it was a very good talk that Rob had given, and that ‘he was good on his feet.’ Rob told him that he was training to be a teacher, but Loosemore said that although he would probably make a great teacher, he would like him to be a trainee solicitor in his practice, and that he would pay for him to go through Law School. Years later, after decades of successful legal work that took him to platforms at international conferences and blue-chip company board rooms, Rob asked him what had prompted his intervention that day. John simply pointed skyward and replied, ‘God.’ Perhaps he saw the ‘equipping’ that Ephesians 2:10 describes. All through the book you see Rob-the-lawyer’s ability to evaluate and describe a situation, often with humour. For example, he could see instantly the benefits of becoming a lawyer, even down to the detail of it paying enough to provide his family with an inside toilet.

It was clearly God who’d sent the 30 year old homeless man, Ronnie Lockwood, to their door that Christmas in 1975. Rob describes him standing there with a crooked smile that said, ‘please let me in.’ Not really knowing what else to do, he and his wife Dianne did just that. They cooked the chicken, gave him dinner, and cleared the spare room so that he could stay the night. And that night became the next night and the next and eventually, 45 years.

Ronnie had been taken into care at eight years of age. He had been turned out to cope on his own at 16. He had learning difficulties and some of those years had been spent at a boarding school for children with special needs. Ronnie had only minimal language and Rob and Dianne never fully found out everything that had happened to him, except that what they did discover seemed quite horrific. All the fear and confusion of those years still affected him and when disturbed he would say, ‘I haven’t done a bad thing, have I?’

There was never a plan or strategy for Ronnie living with them; life just rolled out. They helped him get a job as a bin man (that he loved), and were glad for his help when Dianne developed ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis). They had two children by then. Rob and Dianne remember the awe on his face the first time he held their new baby daughter. They felt that Ronnie, whose own life had been so lacking in touch, was deeply moved by the sense of connection that comes from holding a sleeping baby.

There are hilarious moments, too, like the time that Ronnie went windsurfing behind a boat when they were on holiday in Spain. He lost control and went flying up from the water onto the beach and landed on a large man who was sleeping in the sun.

Ronnie died aged 75, after a series of strokes. It was at the start of the outbreak of Covid, which made visiting very difficult. Rob’s great sorrow was that Ronnie would not understand why they could not visit. On one occasion he managed to say, ‘take me back.’ But they were glad that they managed to be with him to the end, and all three were held in the certainty of their faith. Years earlier, Rob had pleaded, ‘We three, we’ll be together forever, won’t we?’ and they were gladdened to know that yes, they would.

The book ends with the Welsh First Minister, Mark Drakeford, opening the charity’s new Well-being centre, the Lockwood Centre, attached to Glenwood church, Cardiff in 2022. Rob explained why it had been named after Ronnie. He told the story of a man who had never known a real family of his own, but who in the church had found a family larger than he had ever thought possible: how he used to put chairs out every week and stack them again afterwards, and how he washed dishes in the homeless centre. And how he treated everybody equally; both plumbers and professors could end up in one of his jokey head locks. Mark Drakeford said hearing about Ronnie and the jobs that he did here showed that, ‘he wasn’t just the object of other people’s interest, he was somebody who gave something himself.’

It was Ronnie’s experience in the care system that led Rob and Dianne to set up ‘Care for the Family.’ Rob writes, ‘37,000 children are taken into the care system every year; the outcomes for so many of them are very poor and I wondered whether anything could be done to change that.’ He launched Care for the Family in 1988, which Ronnie enjoyed volunteering for, to provide emotional support for families across Britain. A Knock at the Door is published by William Collins.