Fifty years earlier, a knock at the door of a young Cardiff couple began a relationship that would reshape three lives. On 23 December 1975, Rob and Dianne Parsons found Ronnie Lockwood outside their home carrying his possessions in a bin bag and holding a frozen chicken someone had given him for Christmas.
Rob recognised Lockwood from childhood Sunday school and invited him inside. The couple, then aged 27 and 26, cooked the chicken, offered him a bath and planned to host him through Christmas. When the intended departure day arrived, however, they could not send him back onto the streets. A stay measured in days became a home that Lockwood shared with them for 45 years, until his death.
Lockwood was nearly 30 when he joined the household. According to the couple, he had been homeless since he was 15 and had moved between jobs around Cardiff. He was autistic and had spent part of his childhood in institutional care. Research Rob later conducted for his book, *A Knock on the Door*, indicated that Lockwood had been sent about 200 miles away to a school whose historical description used demeaning language about its pupils. He returned to Cardiff at 15 with little support.
The Parsons family helped him secure work collecting waste and bought him new clothes. Rob, a lawyer, rose an hour earlier to drive him to work before starting his own day. At home, the three gradually developed routines that accommodated Lockwood’s need for familiarity. He emptied the dishwasher each morning, bought a newspaper despite struggling to read and write, and waited eagerly for the couple’s reaction to the same type of gift card each Christmas.
His place in the family expanded as Rob and Dianne had two children, Lloyd and Katie, and later five grandchildren. Dianne said Lockwood became particularly important when she was affected by ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome. He prepared milk bottles, played with the children and helped keep the household running when she could not get out of bed.
Lockwood also spent time at the family’s church, collecting donations for homeless people and carefully arranging chairs for services. The relationship was not without strain. The couple said they spent 20 years trying to address his gambling addiction, and Dianne described shifting among the roles of mother, social worker and carer.
Yet both said the companionship enriched their family. Their children treated Lockwood’s presence as ordinary because he had always been there. What began as an improvised act of hospitality became a long-term commitment built from work, compromise and repeated small rituals—and, for Lockwood, a stable place within a family.
