Richard Lutz reviews his past seven days; the loss of a neighbour and a forgotten church in a small valley.
The usual is overshadowed by a big event. I go to say a final goodbye to a former neighbour and friend. It is a memorial service. Family, colleagues and friends are there to pay tribute to a well-formed, full life.
I guess we all remember people from our own little perspective. To me, for twenty years, Glyn Humphreys was the tall, quietly-spoken neighbour across the street who would be fixing the windows on the weekend, mending a front garden wall that seemed to eternally pitch towards the pavement and regularly be roaring off in the car for his morning swim before going to work.
To others he was a father, husband, brother and grandfather. And to many others around the world, he was Professor Glyn Humphreys with a worldwide reputation in psychology, as evidenced by his last post as head of that speciality’s department at Oxford University.
What the memorial service flagged up, months after his sudden death from an undiagnosed heart complaint at the age of 61, was his hinterland. The choice of music as the big screen flashed up old photos was Dylan, Tom Waits and modernist Arvo Part. And I remember when you sat down at his long table at home there would be the latest digi-gizmos to give you the best sound from his esoteric music collection. There was talk of his travels, his mentoring, his kind words to younger people in his field of cognitive neuroscience and his single-minded pursuit to help those in need, especially those affected by stroke.
Friends remembered him and his successful and inevitable climb up the scientific pole; an old pal from school said they sat next to each other because their last names were so close together in the class attendance list. One or two others remembered his fast accurate bowling on the cricket field; those from the experimental psychology field highlighted his remarkable career, partnered by his wife Jane , while others recounted a puckish sense of humour. A family member simply said how much Glyn was missed.
The memorial came as a sharp punctuation to a week illuminated by a flash of good weather. And that meant getting lost in the lee of the Cotswolds.
My friend Paul and I stumbled into a church in the minuscule hamlet of Little Rollright, masked inside a fold of hills. Above us on an escarpment is a beautiful circle of neolithic stones. No-one knows how old the monoliths are nor why the circle was built.
Below, In the wee church, only lit by candlelight, were two alabaster and marble tombs to the Dixon family. The long-forgotten Mr Dixon lies inclined and stolidly propped up on his stone elbow. And around him are the effigies of his nameless wives and nameless children forever at his side in this remote Oxfordshire valley.
