Goodbye Glyn

A friend has died. Glyn - pictured here with David in France in a beautiful house, in a beautiful village called Varages. We were there in 2005 with quite a large group of friends and family. Glyn and his wife Jenny were part of that group.

I will tell my only food-related story of Glyn from that holiday which sort of illustrates how he was.

Glyn, Jenny, David and David's sister Jenny were in a hypermarket shopping for all of us. Do you remember Jenny? Everyone was apparently in a shopping frenzy - well those hypermarkets are like toy shops are to a child aren't they? All except Glyn that is, who was an amiably phlegmatic sort of guy. So I gather he stationed himself with the trolley in the centre of the hypermarket so that everyone could drop their purchases into it whilst he watched the world go by.

And here we all are, in a calmer moment, in the garden of that beautiful house, with the owners' beautiful dog.

The next year Jenny and Glyn were to join us again in a house near the coast and the Spanish border, but alas Glyn fell ill whilst they were elsewhere in France and they had to return to Australia. And really it was from that time that Glyn's life went sadly downhill with years of medical trouble that the medical fraternity either took a very long time to sort out, after poor treatment, in one case, and in the latest instance they never really did get to the bottom of what was wrong. Well this was my understanding anyway So it has been a very sad end of life for he and his family.

But I will not dwell on this. Glyn and Jenny were two of the first people we met when we arrived in Australia in June 1969. The next day perhaps, maybe even the same day. We were invited to meet David's new workmates in the pub after work. I know it was soon after arriving because I was still feeling wobbly after days of sitting in a plane - now that's another story - and they all derived great amusement from my feeling somewhat faint after a few sips of Australian beer.

ICL, where David worked for many years, was an extraordinarily companionable workplace. Maybe it was because many of the young men and women who worked in there came from England, maybe it was because it was a new and exciting industry - IT that is. Whatever the reason we socialised a lot with all of these people, went on camping trips, threw parties, generally mixed and mingled. Over the years many of those friendships have been maintained, even as people left the company and went elsewhere. It was an excellent substitute for the companionship of the university years.

The contact has not been so intense over time as in those early years, mostly because of family commitments and also from dispersion interstate, overseas, and even across Melbourne. Jenny and Glyn, for example have lived on the other, the beach side of Melbourne which is an increasingly long trip to make. And so we do not see each other often. But the friendship was strong enough to mean that we could spend a week in close proximity in Franceand also to catch up now and then.

Glyn played the trombone in a dance band and other smaller bands. I may even have seen him play at university. I belonged to the jazz club - as a listener not a player - and from time to time groups from other universities visited. Glyn told me that he had indeed come to Keele once or twice, hence my having possibly seen him there. But alas I never heard him play here. He was a quiet man. He didn't talk a lot but he had a wonderful wry sense of humour and a gentle nature.

The last years were a struggle for all. So sad that a good man should end his days like this. I shall remember he and Jenny as they were before all of that. The photo below is not a good one - it's blurry and the colours are all wrong. But it is just Glyn and Jenny as they were in happier times.