speeches

Four people spoke at the lunch held at the Old Library, Oxford, to celebrate John's life, January 24. We reproduce two of the speeches below

Stephen Liverman (John's nephew)

I thank Diana, David, Michael & Janet for asking me to present a family view of John today. The last time most of us met was at the superb 85^th birthday party, organised by John’s children. When everyone there spoke of their contact with John, it showed the diversity of John’s life so clearly. It was uplifting to realise the common affection felt for him, in so many different ways. I am sure more recently you will have contributed to or read the very moving tribute internet site John’s three children have set up. The one thing that holds all those contributions together is my Uncle’s overwhelming Humanity.

Ours is a small family and John has been at the centre of it for a long time, holding it close with big distances involved & up to 5 generation. If we wondered how any relative was , we only had to ask John & he knew. He was a constant showing interest & concern to all of us, we will all miss him

John & his brother moved away from the North London community & Jewish beliefs of their parents The long Summer holidays in Sussex, & the social movements of the time, had opened up new horizons for both brothers . Significantly though they did not reject or abandon the love of their parents, that can come with such a shift.

David & I were recalling the only Passover Supper our Grandma organised for her sons & grandchildren. It was at her flat,91Eton Rise, & John & Norman took a lot of liberties with the procedure(“& after another glass of wine….”), teasing their mother but keeping close enough not to upset her, it was a lovely meal, the brothers had gone between being naughty boys to dutiful sons & their mother beamed with happiness, it was an event.

Where Norman became a nurseryman John became a lifelong devoted gardener. The annual vegetable mountains became legendary, huge portions for any visitor eating at Redhill. Years later during the miners strike I met Tony Benn in Chesterfield & mentioned my uncle had worked with him at the ministry. He turned to his wife and said “ You remember all those marrows Darling?” he then also said “Yes he was one of the good ones” ,But it is the vision of these bags of veg going up on the train everyday & being shared around the office that was as important as the fact that John was not one of the civil servants Benn turned on after losing office.

John’s understood “the work/life balance” long before anyone turned it into a clichés . When he did work he worked very hard & long, but his life after retirement was almost twice the length of his childhood His relish of coping with advancing years should take some of the fear out of it for us all, if we can follow anywhere near his example.

One day at Lower Longmire we had been talking over his war memoirs & the rigour of the campaigns he had been involved in, he said that on only one day during that turmoil had he missed having a shave. It particularly exemplified to me the measure of discipline & human dignity John possessed.

How many people with John’s intellect remain as free as he did of ever being patronising. How many people with the discipline he possessed remained as tolerant as he did. The qualities that helped him achieve such a wonderful life and made us love him, modesty humour, open mindedness, the skill for survival, adventure & friendship all emphasised his humanity. It came from his parents & I trust further back too & it will remain an example to those of us who follow him. His choice of work , his war service , the way he travelled, the sports he loved, the charities he has asked us to support today, this Humanist ceremony all bear testament to John’s overwhelming humanity.

Jet Harris

As some of you already know I had the good fortune to spend 5 days with John at the cottage, in what turned out to be the last week of his life. Diana had dispatched me to dog sit Carson, realising that John might struggle to cope with him on his own. I just thought you would like to know what we got up to during that week, basically to reassure you that John was living life to the full, right to the end. Carson by the way, was absolutely no problem at all.

The weather was very cold and wet, so much to John’s frustration it was impossible for him to complete the gardening jobs he had planned. However he wasn’t too worried as he wanted to return to the cottage within 10 days or so, but obviously one of his favourite garden activities, nude sun bathing, would have to wait for the summer months.

During the day we were out and about. We shopped in Booths on two of the mornings. John wanted to take advantage of the car and stock up. He didn’t need a list, he simply remembered that he wanted: alcohol, cuppa soups, bread, butter and milk. He was a very careful shopper. He was delighted to buy 6 bottles of wine at £2.99 each, several bottles of stout at a £1 a bottle and the cheapest bottled cider. He didn’t buy his usual cuppa soup brand, substituting it with another brand that was significantly cheaper. However, I refused to sanction his choice of a rather thin and pallid Weight Watchers loaf offered at 20p off the normal price and replaced it with a different, more interesting loaf. Back at the cottage John carefully stored the cheap wine and we carried on drinking the rather better bottles that Diana and Michael had left behind!

We visited Lakeland, (‘the home of creative kitchenware') for a morning coffee. However, we first mooched round the shop. We had no real intention of buying anything and laughed at the array of kitchen gadgets that you really didn’t know you ever wanted. In the restaurant John admired the young and pretty eastern European waitress.

We drove home via the eastern side of Coniston Water, stopping briefly to admire Coniston Old Man. John talked about swimming across each lake and time spent with the children messing about with rowing boats. He also reminded me of the infamous occasion when Penny, David, Katherine Himsworth, Judith and I had to abandon our cars, because of a heavy snowfall on the Walna Scar road. After some difficulty we managed to ‘slide’ down the steep road into Coniston and started to walk the 10 miles to the cottage. Thankfully we were picked up by the service bus, but still had to walk the last three miles or so to the cottage. We arrived very late to be greeted by John complaining that he had not eaten dinner. Penny was carrying the leg of lamb in her rucksack!

However, I am sure John didn’t go hungry that night. He always enjoyed his food, especially if meals were cooked for him and of course he specialised in eating leftovers and out of date food items. Much to John’s regret, Penny would always throw away the out of date food items from the cupboard and fridge whenever she stayed at the cottage.

Indeed we spent the first evening eating leftovers that Diana and Michael had left after their Christmas / New Year visit. John commented that he really didn’t see the need to buy luxury chocolate fudge or brandy butter but we incorporated both into the meal and we also dispatched the very out of date yogurt without a second thought.

Cuppa soups were John’s preferred snack throughout the day but he never used the same mug twice – so by the end of an average afternoon the kitchen worktop would be littered with as many as 5 or 6 mugs. Rather worryingly, John had also begun to drink Lemsips (the cold and flu remedy) recreationally i.e. he did not have any cold or flu symptoms! So of course extra mugs were added to the washing up pile.

I first met John at Redhill, in 1974 at one of Diana’s parties. Peggy and John had sensibly decided to avoid the chaos and had arranged to spend the evening with friends. For some inexplicable reason John decided I should be responsible for the house and gave me his set of keys as he departed! The next morning I was more than slightly worried that he would be angry and upset to find that the very large window pane on the house staircase was completely broken (one of Michael’s friends had walked through it!) but on his return hardly a word was spoken, one example of his very generous and liberal outlook.

However, I think he was very impressed that I was washing up – an activity that cropped up all too frequently.

At the cottage, in the evenings, we never watched television. Instead we enjoyed gin and tonics before dinner and wine or cider with each meal. We had wide ranging conversations often triggered by radio 4 news items - we pondered the falling value of the pound, the state of the economy, the ‘credit crunch’ and we had a running joke about ‘hardworking families’ seemingly one of Gordon Brown’s favourite phrases. John wondered what Gordon thought about pensioners, who by definition were not working? In the end we concluded that we were some of George Osborn’s ‘innocent victims’ – i.e. victims of the interest rate cuts on our savings.

We spent much more time talking about the Archer’s and considering the state of English cricket. We wondered whether Hannah, the new pig girl and Ryan the gambler were set to be long term characters or just peripheral. Kevin Pietersen had just been ousted as England captain and we had both read numerous articles in the papers about the controversy. We consulted Wisden to try and work out which 11 batsmen (6 from Yorkshire and 5 from Surrey) had a better batting average in Australia than Pietersen. However, we couldn’t complete the list so John said he would consult David at the next opportunity.

One evening we drove to Satterthwaite to see the film Juno, being shown in the parish room by Carol on behalf of the Oxen Park Cinema Club. John enjoyed the film but was more pleased that we won two prizes in the raffle – one being a bottle of Chablis, which I pointed out, would have cost more than £2.99.

If the evenings were stimulating, the nights at the cottage by contrast were rarely peaceful. John normally went to bed with the World Service or Radio 3 blaring so loudly that it could be heard throughout the cottage. If this wasn’t enough to wake you then he would rise during the night to put the washing machine on, which would be followed a couple of hours later by the dryer – all this of course to take advantage of the cheap rate electricity which was available between midnight and 7.00am. In the old days (which weren’t so long ago) John would bath before 6.00 am to take advantage of the lower electricity rates – Janet sensibly always refused a cheap bath and showered or bathed at the full rate.

John’s night time activities ensured that his clothes were always clean but he did not always dress well. He preferred the casual look, usually mismatching different coloured clothes. On one occasion we were booked to eat lunch at the 4 star Swan Hotel, Newby Bridge. John marched in, rather eccentrically dressed if I remember, in a crumbled purple shirt and old corduroy jacket. Out of John’s view the desk clerk, assuming an undesirable had wandered into the hotel lobby, stepped from behind his desk in an attempt to stop his progress – needless to say we gained entry and enjoyed a thoroughly good lunch.

As ever John was planning and looking ahead. We talked about the forthcoming garden tour to the Scilly Isles in May, which he had booked with Janet. He looked forward to his monthly lunch with Penny in London and hoped to go out with Lisa (his new neighbour) in Oxford.

A stranger listening to my memories of John might assume that he was rather stingy; however, as we all know, he was an incredibly generous host, giving freely of his time and offering many of us free use of the cottage. He was always stimulating company and had a phenomenal memory. He often talked of his school days, life at Cambridge, his war service and of course his extensive travels. He seemed to collect young ladies at every overnight stop or train journey – and of course many visited him in London, Oxford or the cottage. He took a genuine interest in everyone he met and always asked me about my teaching job, my activities and the health of my parents.

He also had a great sense of humour and could always laugh at himself. When he bought the cottage in 1973 there were 350 Christmas trees growing in the garden and considerable time was spent digging them up and distributing them far and wide. In the mid seventies he recalled being stopped in Whitehall by a policeman at 5.00am. He had drawn the officer’s attention because he was carrying a Christmas tree, a bag of oranges and a brief case. He had some explaining to do!

John and I completed Wainright’s coast to coast walk in 1986. We both experienced various aches and pains over the 13 days but always found things to laugh at. After a lunchtime drink at Danby Wiske John fell asleep on the grass in the middle of a small traffic island – he always regretted missing the police patrol car which circled the island three times to check us out. At Boggle Hole youth hostel on the penultimate night John was dismayed to discover that our dormitory was in an annexe, accessed by a flight of 50 or more steps. His ankle was swollen and he was hobbling badly and had to be helped up the flight of stairs. Once in the dorm he went straight to bed and refused to come out for dinner. He was grateful to receive a tin of rice pudding and a Mars bar for his evening meal, a tale he frequently recalled.

Very few here will have climbed Great Cockup, a 1,700’ fell in the northern Lakes. John and Janet had the distinction of climbing it twice in two days. Having descended the fell Janet realised that she had left her glasses on the summit – with no time to go back they had to return the next day to climb it again to retrieve the glasses – a return road journey of at least 80 miles – indeed a great cock up!

John will of course be greatly missed by all of us, but I think we shouldn’t be too sad at his passing and we should remember the many good times we have all shared with him over the years.

Jet Harris.

January 2009.