Eulogy for William Hugh Thomas George

From my friend Nicholas George:



August 26, 2006.

Please be seated.

Gareth, Peny and Trevor, Rev. Pamela Fawcett, friends & neighbours.

William Hugh Thomas George – Dad

Charlotte Malvai George – Mum

They lived and worked as a team, seamlessly together. It was their house, we were their children, and they were the parents.

Dad was born in 1925, in Lewisham, London, in the days when the South East boroughs were leafy, clean, modestly elegant homes for working folk. The houses were heated by coal and lit by gaslight. Pea-soupers were still a common occurrence, and horses were in regular use as drays for street deliveries.

Dad’s father Hugh, was from Holyhead in North Wales. He had served in a Welsh Regiment during the 1st World War, and had been gassed in the trenches. He died shortly after I was born.

Dad was brought up and went to school in Lewisham until 1939 when he was evacuated from London due to the Blitz. He was sent to Sussex at first and then on to Wales, for a total duration of 3 years, until at the age of 16, he left school and joined Unilever as a staff trainee.

At school, Dad had been particularly good at mathematics, and his headmaster had recommended him for a newly launched government scheme to train engineers. Dad received an award to study at Woolwich College, and he was subsequently awarded a degree in Mechanical Engineering from London University in 1945.

A condition of this scheme was that you would serve in the army for three years after graduation. Dad passed through officer cadet training, and was commissioned into the Royal Engineers, and saw service in India. He left the army with the rank of Captain, and was gazetted. A memento from this period of his life used to hang on a hook in the garage in the early years. It was a holster and belt, made out of leather and sheepskin, a wonderful artifact for a boy to find, but unfortunately without the revolver still present.

In 1948 Dad went to Persia as an employee of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Dad would subsequently spend his entire career working for BP – as this company would become, until retirement when he was 48 years old in 1973.

After working for 3 years in Persia, Dad was posted to Iraq in 1951. Dad enjoyed Iraq. There was duck shooting on the marshes in the South, and wonderfully large perch in the river Tigris, to catch and then grill over wood coals; and then there was Mum.

Mum and Dad met in Iraq in 1953, where Mum was working as the matron in the Baghdad hospital.

Mum had been born in the same year as Dad, 1925, and had been raised on a Welsh Hill farm. After school, she had left home at 16 years of age, to embark on her nursing career.

Mum and Dad were married in Baghdad in 1954 – and then honeymooned in Persia – no doubt buying a carpet or two along the way. Both Mum and Dad grew up in thrifty circumstances. When he was an undergraduate, Dad once cycled from London to the Lake District, for a holiday. In those days, you would go for a holiday and stay in Youth Hostels, or you would pick fruit on farms for your board & lodging, and a little pocket money besides. This early experience would set the scene for later life, and Mum and Dad always enjoyed gathering in their own harvest. As a family, we would pick blackberries once a year on Honing Common and strawberries at Gimmingham and later at Swafield – all to be turned into jam by Mum as well as much other fruit besides.

I do believe that Mum and Dad had experienced similar upbringings in many salient respects, and Mum’s childhood on a Welsh farm had been mirrored by Dad’s stay on a Welsh farm during his years of evacuation from London. A very pleasant, old-fashioned country aroma hung around the house. At any given moment there might be jam-making, bottling, blanching, bread-making, clothes-making, or needlework taking place; all meals, breakfast, lunch, and tea, were cooked from scratch and eaten sitting down at the table with proper napkins. A common sense, country thriftiness was applied to purchasing, and the mundane household items were bought secondhand or on sale if at all possible. Mum and Dad worked at all of this, as a team, together.

However, that’s not to say that Dad didn’t find time for an occasional pipe. As the artist and draughtsman David Hockney says, "Smoking gives you the little pauses that are necessary in life", and Dad made sure he paused in life reasonably often.

A favourite picture of Dad, is of him sitting in his armchair puffing on a pipe and composing and marshalling his thoughts. Dad was a man of integrity, what he thought he was, and what he was he had thought through. From that chair and for 34 years since he had retired from a salaried position, Dad planned and watched over his investments, selected his seeds for his vegetable plot, read the daily newspaper and many library books, and took breaks from gardening and helping mum.

A tragedy of modern life has been the discovery that smoking is so bad for you physically – we are left only with consummate tea drinking now, in order to pause from life.

The pattern of their life working abroad, was such that every year they would return for the long summer holiday in England.

In the summer of 1960 they spent their leave at a house in Mundesley. They enjoyed the village so much that they bought a plot of land here and built a bungalow on it, and in that house Gareth was born in December 1962. I well remember the winter of that year and the cold and the snows, as I expect many of you do, especially those who work on the land.

After Mum and Dad had retired, and began living in Mundesley full time, they were always in their garden. Vegetables and grass cutting were Dad’s particular province, the flowers and shrubs belonged to Mum, and watching the weather synopsis and forecast was a very serious business. In the heyday of the Mundesley Horticultural Society, many awards would be garnered for vegetables, fruits, and flower arrangements, and we all enjoyed the atmosphere in the Coronation Hall on these occasions.

Mundesley was, and still is, a wonderful place for children in the summer. We would go fishing and shrimping on the beach with Dad, and enjoyed the whole process – the tramp in waders to the beach carrying a spade, rods, rod rests, and reels; the digging for lugworm, the challenge of casting as far out as possible, the hope of catching many flatties, and then returning home for tea, and showing mum the catch. After a tea of fried fish, Dad might tune in some of his favourite comedy on the telly, featuring the likes of Eric Sykes, Harry Worth, Morecombe & Wise or The Two Ronnies.

Dad had his acquaintances, with whom he might fish on the beach with, or, in the early years, meet for a drink. He didn’t generally seek society, but he was very sociable when in company. Trevor had the gift of being able to draw Dad out, and he and Peny included Dad in their home life, and on many of their social occasions. Trevor would always remark on how well Dad would fit in and be able to talk with their friends, and that their friends enjoyed talking to Dad. I know that some of you are here today and we thank-you for that kindness.

Mum and Dad were largely self-contained, being content and happy with each others company. Dad essentially kept his emotions and thoughts to himself, and provided an atmosphere of steadiness and rationality. Mum’s welsh temperament and spirit established optimism, a very loving depth of feeling, and activity. They were a complimentary team, and a large part of their success was based on that simple fact. They knew, that the secret of success in life is to take a few good, simple ideas, stick with them, and allow them to work for you.

Now, death has done all that death can do, to Mum and Dad. But we are not to be sad. Instead, we will remember that their lives, were lives well lived. We will go out and lay them down together, as they always were throughout life. And acknowledging Dad’s amazing example of steadfastness at the close of his day, we will remember that they loved us always, and that we will always love them.

Amen.