Alan Ralph Norton

                                                                   1911 -  1985

This is not a memorial service in the traditional sense, nor a service of thanksgiving in the modern sense.   Alan would not have liked either.   But he would have been delighted to have brought all his friends together and, perhaps, because of his unalterable modesty, surprised to see so many.   This is our opportunity to crystallise our memories of him and to share them.

I am grateful to Pat for asking, as his oldest friend to begin - difficult and

painful though it is.

 

My memories of Alan begin with our first term as undergraduates at Queens, Oxford, and as first year medical students.   In an alphabetical minded society the letters of our names "No" and "Or" inevitably brought us together, side by side, in the Botany and Zoology labs, and much more relevant, in the practical exams.   So we forged a joint enterprise, as the blind led the blind by nods and shakings of the head, and pointing fingers at the right bottle on the shelf.  It worked wonders until one terrible day an interloper appeared in the laboratory, apparently called "001"  (it was long before the days of James Bond!), and stood between us, interrupting our chain of communication.  He proved to be a baffled Chinese student called "Ooi"!

 

Our friendship continued - eventually I married Anne, and Alan drove us to our

honeymoon hotel in Kathleen's car.  (We were poor in those days and honeymoons were 

already becoming something of a formality!)  Pat was a very close friend of Anne's and the

best things happened.  She and Alan married and for over forty years we have each enjoyed 

the greatest blessing on this earth, a continuous happy marriage.Anne and I have tried to find words for some of our memories of Alan.  The first is his laughter - the laughter of a boy without a trace of old age - bright, vivid, witty, but never ever unkind or spiteful.

The next is his glorious gift for sudden, penetrating inconsequence, a kind of blow for the 

freedom of the spirit and defiance of conventions.

Then there were those times which Anne calls Alan's "lovely dotty moments, "when he and

she would roll about with laughter and Pat and I, good stolid Cumbrians , would find it 

bewildering. "Never mind,"  Pat would say, "they will come down from the ceiling soon".

There are other vivid memories - Of his intense pleasure in beautiful things.  "Roger, it was marvellous",  said in that absurd staccato way of his;  of his appreciation of good food, "What's in this - you have put so and so in "  and of places,  "delicious".

But perhaps less immediately obvious, because his manner often concealed it, was 

the true balance in all his opinions - his judgements always expressed firmly but gently, often

camouflaged by his pretence of taking nothing seriously.

To all of us his going is extremely painful - to me it has a poignancy I have never experienced before.   The greatest tribute to Alan we see here this afternoon.   He and Pat 

had a unique gift for preserving friendships - there are here today a surprising number of us who

have been friends for over forty years.

I have said, so far, too little about Pat.  She made it possible for Alan to live in his own

delightful life-style.   Without her this would have been impossible, and his would have been

a sad and lonely life.   But they each preserved their own independence without damaging the other's.

To her we can only offer at this moment a baffled sympathy - unable, as we are, to visualise what

life without Alan will mean, but sure that she will reconstruct it.

Had he survived her he would have echoed the words of my old friend and mentor,

Alec Cooke, who on his wife's death after over fifty years of marriage,

"Thank God she was not the one left to mourn."  Pat, I am sure, feels just the same. 

​

Dr Roger Ormrod