A MODERN day Mother Theresa made a dying neighbour’s last months more comfortable by nursing him in her home.

Businesswoman Lesley Whittaker-Daley saw pensioner Arthur Timmis looking sad outside Somerfield in Stockton Heath around four years ago and approached him.

The mum-of-one knew of Arthur because he regularly took the wheelie bins in for people on their street, Clydesdale Road, Appleton.

But she noticed he was particularly under-the-weather after his partner Ann Barton died.

She invited him for a cup of tea and asked if he wanted to help her family with some odd jobs around the house.

Dropping by regularly since then Arthur, a former painter and decorator, became part of the family.

He adored Megan, Lesley’s eight-year-old daughter, who started calling him granddad.

The 76-year-old went to stay with the family over Christmas and did not go back home.

He did not seem to be himself and started falling asleep on the sofa after dinner.

Lesley said: “I said to my husband Paul ‘he isn’t well’ and asked if he would mind if Arthur moved in. He said to do whatever would make me happy, so I changed my back office into a bedroom for him and persuaded him to go to the doctor.

“He used to tell Megan he loved her all of the time. He had always been here for tea so I didn’t give it a second thought. He was so special, moving in was the right thing to do.”

In February, doctors confirmed Arthur had cancer of the oesophagus.

“He had a bell that he used to ring in the night if he needed me because he had such a little voice. I would just make sure he was steady,” added Lesley, owner of Megan Paul hair salon, Chester Road, Lower Walton.

One Sunday an ambulance was called to the house for Arthur. The paramedic saw a number of elderly people around the table and thought the home was a soup kitchen for old people.

Even though the pensioner was very sick he used to joke he was getting better and wanted people to keep optimistic.

In the weeks leading up to his death he became very weak so Lesley moved him and his bed downstairs into a lounge. She stayed with him in his room for around three weeks and cut her working hours to give him around-the-clock care.

Lesley, aged 43, said: “He had a widescreen TV in front of his bed but still wanted to watch his portable one.

“His wish was to see outside so the day before he died I popped him in his wheelchair and he pointed to where he wanted to go. We would laugh through the most serious things and that is what kept him going.

“He used to say ‘I would be dead if I wasn’t here’ and kept saying he was a nuisance but he was no trouble.

“He died at my house on May 24. He didn’t want to go to hospital and I promised him he wouldn’t.”

Megan, a Broomfields Primary School pupil, still misses her ‘granddad’ and sleeps with his scarf. She wants to take the remainder of his ashes on an aeroplane because Arthur had never travelled on one.

Lesley said: “I do miss him. It is very quiet here now, he was like one of the family. He was a proud man and at least I know he was well looked after. He had his dignity.

“A lot of people need somebody, if only everybody just gave a few minutes of their time. People just need company.”

Lesley Beckett, of Guernsey Close, Appleton, who told the Guardian about her kind-hearted friend, said: “Everybody laughs at her and says ‘who else will you take in’ because she is that sort of person.

“She has taken stray animals in before.

“She doesn’t have to do it but she takes everything in her stride, it is just amazing.

“She doesn’t like to say no and has just got that nature where she wants to do that.”