Jim Golland's Funeral
Roger Golland spoke at Jim Golland's funeral on June 12th, 2002. This is his script...
JSG (1922-2002)
It's a bit stark, an obituary notice - died peacefully, 79, donations please to a charity few of us have ever heard of before. How to reconcile that to the complex man I - we - Joan - knew, and still love, and who filled episodes in our lives in myriad ways?
My father Dad - Jim - JSG - Mr Golland - Sir, Sir, Spenser threw the Faerie Queen at me! we all remember him through our own optic. Always busy, he was still writing on the day he died. In a letter received next morning he described in dispassionate, almost quizzical, prose the various ailments and irritants that were intruding on his work. And he closed with "Sorry to be a pain".
"Sorry to be a pain" is very typical of my dad. He did not like fuss or enjoy ceremony, was not given to emoting and sentimentality, and would not hanker after any great parting flourishes today. In many ways, he preferred the disciplines of an earlier age, of correspondence, of scholarship, of courtesy, of understatement, of irony, of whimsy. So what would he have liked for an epitaph?
There are so many home chapters - childhood in the damp north-west - schooled in Worthing - the RAF during the war - Teddy Hall, Oxford - Pontefract - twenty years with my mother Susan in Catlins Lane, Pinner - then almost thirty with Joan at Azalea Walk, Old Eastcote. Uncounted people, all cherishing our own private memories. What are the common threads?
We can write off a couple at the outset. Dad was not greatly into sport. I remember, as a 9 or 10-year old, with ridiculous clarity, the golden duck he got to a double-bounce underarm tennis ball in the match between Harlyn Primary School First XI and Parents - and to this day do not know if he was intending or not to teach me a priceless lesson about avoiding unnecessary risk or ridicule. The same rule about Best Avoided applies to singing, a family no-go zone, as some of you are about to endure. Nor was he one for overseas travel. Aden in the war put an end to sun-worshipping and exotic food.
No, the clues about Dad are closer to home, to England, to English literature (not too much twentieth century stuff), to "this blessed plot, this realm" described by John of Gaunt; to the history of the ordinary - extraordinary - local citizen; to the inherited background of institutions and families that defines who we are; to jumbo camelias and yellow roses. There were theatre productions in which he invested enormous energy and from which he derived enormous pleasure. Getting coal-miners to declaim Shakespeare in the Festival of Britain at Pontefract Castle fifty years ago. There was the discovery of ancestors who landed with William the Conqueror, of related Gollands running sheepfarms in the Australian outback; the cascade of books, pamphlets and articles that came more recently - Churchill at Harrow, the Apprentices, the Fair in Pinner, whence he made his last outing - the fruits of happy hours in archives and libraries. I have little doubt Joan that he's already found some dusty celestial records and purloined a computer, with aggravating St Peter's software, to produce his first pieces for the Pearly Gates Observer.
But the common thread, the epithet, the attribute, I am sure he would want, and which he truly deserves, is JSG, School-teacher. Dad started teaching 50 years ago and never really stopped. It was his vocation and his reward. He was reminiscing about pupils from Harrow County and Harrow School until a few days ago. Only last month I met, in Belgrade of all places, a Harrovian, who once threw a book in one of my dad's classes and said he never forgot the love of literature, and of books, which was thrown back. We've all seen that Department of Education advertisement "Noone forgets their favourite teacher". There are many who include dad amongst their formative influences, students whom he nurtured towards an appetite for study and creative expression, in school magazines, societies and plays, skills which led to scholarships and on to acclaim in politics, the theatre, media, wherever. It would be invidious and impertinent to pick out a particular testimonial. Little gave him more pleasure than to receive news from old boys and masters, or to read fond anecdotes on the school web-pages. There is a bundle of tributes there today. I reckon that is his proudest legacy.
One of Dad's most treasured mementos - and one of my earliest memories - was a small shield with heraldic arms, presented by the schoolboy cast of Shaw's St Joan. It is a moving play about a woman of strong character and determined loyalty. I said earlier that Dad's letter closed with an apology. Actually, what he wrote right at the end was that Joan had been a constant help, a real Saint. Saint Joan, his muse, wife and companion for almost thirty years, thank you for looking after him.
So, the teacher would, I think, want you not to grieve, not "to talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs with rainy eyes writing sorrow on the bosom of the earth". But rather to accept his appreciation for the joy and love you - we - all shared at different points in different ways, and to give thanks for a life lived to the full.
Roger JA Golland
Breakspear Crematorium
Wednesday 12 June, 2002