Monday 2 June 2014

Joanne Louise Taylor (Jo Johns) 1939 -2014

                                                      

Jo in my office c 1980

Jo, who died on the Isle of Wight on 12th May, was my secretary for over twenty years. She was born on 4th April 1939, the only child of Margaret (‘Peggy’) nee Allcock and Pavel Rudensky, a Polish fighter pilot with the RAF who was killed in 1941. Margaret later married Frank, an Irish Catholic. They lived in the Fazakerley suburb of Liverpool and Jo was sent to a boarding school for the children of service people. Some time in her youth she contracted TB, which was to be significant after her accident more than 60 years later. Following her schooling she took a secretarial course and at 17 she married a Jewish man (probably arranged by her mother), but the marriage was annulled after a few months. Jo maintained cheerfully that he was gay.

Jo’s best friend was Louise, and the two had a lot of fun together in Liverpool and later in London. In the early 1960s Louise’s sister Sheila (Rehm) was offered a secretarial job in London but she didn’t want to go to London and so Louise took the job. Jo came down with her and they shared a flat together. They loved the theatre and dancing – and became good tap dancers and used to practice with a group at the National Theatre. Jo liked to call herself a ’hoofer’ and she developed a huge crush on Rudolph Nureyev, and for years had a poster of him in tights inside the cupboard door of her desk…

Jo in the 1960s was working as a court stenographer, taking a verbatim record of what was said at trials. She was one of the court stenographers in the Moors murder trial of Brady and Hindley in 1966, something that must have had uncomfortable echoes when she learned of the murder of Mark in 1983.

At some time in the 1960s Jo married Mark Johns, who was a well-connected journalist some 21 years her senior.  In 1949 he’d become the world’s first full-time television critic on the Express, later worked in public relations and as campaign director for the Keep Britain Tidy campaign. They travelled widely together, once going to Cuba on a cargo ship. In 1973, citing exhaustion from the rat race, he bought the Bowes Moor Hotel on the A66, near the Durham / Cumbria border. There Jo indulged in her love of cooking and even wrote a cook book. She divorced Mark sometime in the late 70s.
Jo had joined Thomas Miller in about 1969 as a ‘temp’ – a receptionist and audio typist - and travelled backwards and forwards to Bowes Moor regularly. She was famous for the shortness of her skirts in those days. David Martin-Clark used to refer to her as the ’pocket Venus’ - but also in a note to me after her death as ‘a great lady’.  

There is a story that I told at her retirement of her going in to the old man – Dawson Miller – who in those early days personally handed out one’s next year’s salary at Christmas – to receive hers. As he handed over her salary note, he said to her: ‘And maybe with this you might buy yourself a slightly longer skirt’. Covered in confusion, Jo made for the door, to hear him say as she turned the handle: ‘But I do hope you won’t.’
She became my personal secretary in 1979. I can remember the date quite well by reference to one of the world’s largest collisions in which two VLCCs fully laden with crude oil collided in a tropical rainstorm off Trinidad. I was dealing with one of the ships and instructed a solicitor, Richard Shaw, to advise.  Soon afterwards, at the height of the investigation, Richard left the firm he was with and set up his own firm with another partner a few doors away from our office. I can well remember going round there with Jo, who became friends with Richard and his secretary Sue Patmore with a bottle of champagne - and a good party ensued. Richard saw Jo’s quality immediately and as we worked together on many subsequent cases including one which required us to get the first fax machine in Millers. Sadly Richard himself died of a brain tumor only last October.   
I was then manager of a ‘syndicate’ of claims staff dealing with the shipping problems of shipowners from the Far East and India – and some ‘blue-chip’ Greeks.  Jo was a tireless worker and we often turned out up to 60 letters a day – and that didn’t count the telexes that were the urgent communications of the time; later faxes and of course e-mails. In my own retirement speech in 2006, I said: 'Finally, I must mention my former secretary of over 20 years, Jo Johns, who I am glad to say has made it up here tonight from playing in the panto at Cowes.  There is no denying that an exceptional secretary plays a key part in one's career.  Just to give you a flavour of Jo’s work ethic, (while keeping very quiet about her still more remarkable life and loves), she used to reach the office at 6 am every morning, and didn't leave until late in the evening.  The early mornings, she knew, were when I must reply to faxes from Japan, because the Japanese would expect to have an answer to the questions they sent the same day, before they themselves went home.  Nowadays, I suppose it's more efficient to bash out an e-mail oneself, but something is lost in the harmonious flow of work from the time when your secretary knew exactly what work you were doing.'

And Jo did indeed know exactly what work I was doing – and kept a close but always discreet eye on my private life as well. She knew everyone who called, and always recalled their names and what they were about; many of my personal friends fondly remember talking to her to this day. And she was well-known around the office as she had a great talent for making friends.
Graham Daines writes: I well remember those days in Syndicate 1 when Jo was wont to take no prisoners.  She helped to hone my verbal sparring skills, always in a forceful but friendly way.

Shockingly, Mark Johns was murdered in February 1983, though it was five months before anyone realized. Jo had been trying to ring him as he had stopped paying her alimony, and got no answer from the hotel for several weeks. She then asked me to try and of course I also got nowhere, so we decided to ring the police – who then went to the hotel and found bloodstains but no body. That July, two youths – former Bowes Moor employees – were arrested in Darlington for a minor burglary. “While we’re here,” they said, “we might as well tell you about the murder”. Directed to a shallow grave, police immediately began digging on the nearby moor. The youths had shot Mark from the staircase as he walked below, and then bundled him into the chest deep freeze with his Alsatian dog, which they had also shot. They had then sold what they could from the hotel and had driven his car to Hull and left it near the ferry terminal to make it look as though he had gone abroad.  The story was big in the north, but barely registered in London, which was fortunate, as Jo was left alone.
In 1984 I left my ‘syndicate’ role and we moved to a nearby office to help start a new insurance mutual for Thomas Miller, called TIM. There we were joined by Tony Payne and his then secretary Julia Mavropoulos among others. Julie became one of Jo’s closest friends as she herself developed into a seasoned executive, and Tony too was a great admirer of Jo, writing from his home in Greece: You knew her so much better than anybody else in Millers but I shall also always have fond memories of her. Coming back to work in London and being involved in a brand new business I felt very vulnerable to start with and quickly learned that Jo was a key player if I was to successfully integrate into the group. I also quickly understood that with Jo you were placed on the ‘approved’ or ‘not approved’ list and once you had been judged there was precious little chance of any change of opinion! Fortunately I got on the right list and for the rest of Jo's time at Millers found her to be a good friend and highly efficient colleague.

I also remember that Jo's idea of being supportive and mine were not always the same. During our Creechurch House days I had a secretary who had given us a number of problems and I arranged a meeting to discuss them. Jo attended in her capacity of senior secretary and to lend support (as I thought!). As I had feared the meeting became fairly heated and ended with the secretary throwing the remains of a cup of coffee over me. Jo's reaction was to burst into fits of laughter while I completely failed to see the funny side at the time. It was only some time later that I realised that of the various possibilities of what might have happened after the episode Jo's laughter was probably the best outcome.

You mention Jo's love life and I was privileged to meet the famous Maurice on several occasions. I found him to be charming and an ideal companion for Jo. I also wouldn't want to finish without mentioning Jo's complete and utter loyalty to you. She loved a good gossip but would never reveal anything beyond a certain point and it doesn't need me to tell you that she was truly one in a million’.

Tony has mentioned a companion who Jo had for several years. Despite that fact that he has also died, I won’t reveal any more details except that he was a clever and well-regarded politician and that they were well matched.   Mavis Taylor recalls her referring to him as her ‘paramour’. Jo’s attitude to her own and everyone else’s love life was joyful and she was never happier than hearing about her friends’.  She was a great admirer of Cynthia Payne - ‘Madam Sin’ as the papers called her – and always said that she herself would make a great ‘madam’. And I’m sure she would. She was extremely good with money and in the time-honoured phrase ‘could make money out of an Armenian’. She used to run the Millers’ Christmas Club and usually returned much more to those in it than they were expecting.

Another of Jo’s many great qualities was that she was at ease with and could mix with everyone – from the south London villains who she met in the pubs of Streatham where she lived at the time, to the shipowners, lawyers, brokers and agents who we worked with. And they all respected her greatly. No one fazed her, and she was admired by many for her love of fun and down-to-earth Liverpudlian sense of humour. Nor was she fazed by new technology, taking easily to computers and using e-mail as early as 1987.

Jo married a third time some time in the late 80s – Don Taylor - a painter and decorator and also a man who loved the horses and pubs. He was a charming man and did up my flat and those of my friends. But Jo became disillusioned with his drinking and gambling habits and he fell into the 'non-approved list', while Jo moved into a flat in Dolphin Square. When he died, Jo had to pay off his debts, which she did, scrupulously. Thereafter when she lived in Victoria I recall a police superintendent as a companion, but when she moved to the Isle of Wight to be close to a sick friend, she had tired of men, and devoted herself to helping others.

As I have said, Jo moved easily in any circles and as part of her job with me quite often travelled for shipowners’ brokers’ and agents’ directors’ meetings, which she of course also helped to organise. She had a long check-list of things that I should have or not forget (like injections!) and I don’t think I ended up anywhere without anything important. Here is a photo of her with the TIM board of directors in Hamburg in 1991; quite at home. And she came several times to Bermuda.

Jo among the TIM board in Hamburg
Sue Dunning can also recall her going to Directors’ meetings in Seoul, Dubrovnik, Paris, Zurich and Monte Carlo – and Julie says that whenever you mentioned anywhere to Jo, she had always been there!  She often travelled with Sue and they invariably had marvelous times – I can well remember their laughter!  Sue recalls them making so much noise as they ordered ‘Black Russians’ in their room at 2am, that Stephen James had to bang on the wall so that he could get some sleep.

Jo retired from Thomas Miller in 1999 and moved to the Isle of Wight to care for a friend who was ill with cancer. She found another office job working for the Co-Op in Cowes and helping with the Ever Green Charity, where her money-raising talents came in very useful. I remember her ringing me with the news that she had helped secure a £25,000 grant for them. She enjoyed the company of her dog, 'Daisy' and she joined the Panto Players, usually being cast as a pirate!

Being the only woman with a car, used to take several friends shopping each week and out to their various clubs and to bingo where they shared all their winnings – which, as one might expect with Jo, actually happened quite often.

Her friends Rose Newman and Paddy Sower formed a mutual support network; they all went shopping together and made meals which they shared with each other, and they shared newspapers and saw each other every day.

She loved driving and in 2011 managed to have an accident in which she shunted a police car into the car in front – a three-car pile-up. Fortunately no one except her was hurt, and the police soon realised that they had met their match; so much so that when they sent an officer round to take a statement, he told her that he would nod when she should say yes and shake his head when she should say no or nothing – and that way she was only cautioned. Sadly, the x-rays she had taken after the accident revealed that she had lung cancer, and she spent time having radiotherapy in Southampton General but they couldn’t operate owing to her lungs being so weak from her childhood TB.

As her illness progressed, Rose went to every hospital appointment and chemotherapy session.  Paddy would drive Jo to all her hospital appointments and collect her.

In her down-to-earth way, Jo couldn’t abide people being miserable or talking about their illnesses and hated going to hospital in the bus as she was sure to have to sit next to a ‘moaner’. Her own illness was sadly long but she never ever complained, though she was clearly frustrated by her diminishing eyesight. Ian Jarrett recalls ‘I spoke to her just before Christmas and she was laughing and joking even though she knew that she didn't have long’. 

When she became really ill, her close friends, together with June Mortimer-Hume, a retired nurse, who also lived close by, took it upon themselves to look after her in relays, get her up and dressed, make her meals and feed her.  They were the ones who called in the doctor when it became obvious she was beyond staying at home.

Once she was in hospital, all her close friends visited her - particularly Paddy, who went in twice a day and he made sure he was there at meal times to feed her.  The same happened when she went into the nursing home, where June sewed name labels in all her clothes.

In addition to her close friends on the Island, Mavis Taylor visited her the day before she died, but several others had come from London including Julie Mavropoulos, Angela George, Lyn Horn, and her childhood friend Sheila Rehm provided enormous support and also took the main burden of settling her affairs.

Apart from those quoted here I have seen lovely messages about Jo from many of her former colleagues at Thomas Miller including – Terence Coghlin, Stephen James, Francis Frost, Nigel Lindrea, Luke Readman, Nigel Carden, Bob Grainger, Mark Holford, Karl Lumbers, Nick Whitear, Colin Lewin, Richard Carpenter and Malcolm Bird, and many more will have shared their memories of her with each other. But perhaps her best epitaph was a simple ‘get well’ card beside her bed in Southampton General Hospital in 2011, containing loving messages from over a dozen of her close friends from Thomas Miller, more than ten years after her retirement. She gave much love and joy, and received much in return, and no one who knew her well will ever forget her.


Herry Lawford
2nd June 2014

PS I have very few photos of Jo – she didn’t like having her picture taken. There is a photo of the syndicate taken in 1980 which has everyone in it but Jo  – but fortunately Sheila brought a collection of early photographs to the funeral and I have added them to an album on Flickr here
   https://www.flickr.com/gp/herry/46fg04/



Saturday 24 May 2014

Chelsea Flower Show 2014

The Telegraph Garden

The Chelsea Flower Show is my favourite event of the year, and this year was wonderful. The weather was much kinder than last year - when it was so cold - and the gardens more interesting. I particularly loved The Telegraph garden designed by Tommaso del Buono and Paul Gazerwitz  (above) as well as the 'Best in Show' garden by Luciano Giubbieli for Laurent Perrier (below). 

The Laurent Perrier garden

My favourite Japanese designer Kazayuki Ishihara again excelled himself with a 'Best in Show' artisan garden aptly named 'Paradise', but I am beginning to tire a little of his cushions of moss and relentless traditional imagery and hope that next year he might try something more avant-garde (as his early creations using water on glass, were). 

Ishihara's Paradise on Earth garden
Click here for some more photos from the show

See also:
Chelsea Flower Show 2010
Chelsea Flower Show 2008
Chelsea Flower Show 2007

Monday 19 May 2014

Drapers' 650th Anniversary Lunch for the Almshouses

The Master, the Admiral Lord Boyce, addressing the residents at the lunch

The Drapers' Company celebrates the 650th Anniversary of the grant of its first charter by Edward III this year (though the Company has existed since the C12th) and as part of the anniversary celebrations, held a lunch for the almost 200 residents of its three almshouses at Queen Elizabeth's College, Greenwich, Walter's Close, Southwark, and Edmanson's Close, Tottenham.

The residents gather in the Court Room before the lunch

The event was also close to the 450th anniversary of the founding of the first Drapers' Almshouses

Wednesday 7 May 2014

Favourite Gardens - Bere Mill in Spring

Bere Mill
Bere Mill is a beautiful C18th mill on the Test at Whitchurch where Portals first made bank notes. I visited it last year in early summer and took a number of photos but this year have returned in May, taking photos with different cameras here and here.

Add caption

Saturday 3 May 2014

Favourite Places - Wallop Brook

Wallop Brook, Hampshire, on the road between Stockbridge and Salisbury. A classic pastoral scene in late April

Tuesday 29 April 2014

Lawford Lunch at the Drapers' Hall

The Lawfords at Drapers' Hall
A fine lunch was arranged at the Drapers' Hall on 28th April 2014 for 30 descendants of Samuel Lawford (1739 - 1845) who like his father Valentine, was Master of the Drapers' Company (in 1809). The family maintained strong links with the Company for the next two hundred years.

The Archivist, Penny Fussell, gave a talk on the Company and a tour of the Hall. Jeremy Lawford talked about the Lawford family history and Nigel Lawford talked about the family's long links with the Drapers' Company.

Further details, including the guest list and photos, can be found on my Archive

Monday 7 April 2014

Car Club Rally in Stockbridge

Stockbridge High St

The Bean Car Club held its 50th Daffodil Run rally in Stockbridge High St on 6th April.  On a damp day the beautifully prepared cars gleamed and the sound of ancient gears being ground echoed round the town.

Triumph Dolomite
The rally was heading to the Alice Lisle pub in the New Forest before ending up in Christchurch

For more photos click here

Monday 24 March 2014

Falloden Nature Reserve Closed to Walkers

The Falloden Nature Reserve early on a spring morning

The Falloden Nature Reserve between Winchester College and St Catherine's Hill has been shorn of many of its mature trees and has been closed for over a year, but seems now to be shut off to the public for good. This is a great pity; it was not well-known and never in danger of being overused, but the College seems to think that they should keep people out on 'health and safety' grounds after a woman sued them after falling on one of the bridges. That is letting the cart drive the horse; make sure that the bridges and walkways are safe and maintain insurance. The College's rationale would require most of the pavements in the country to be closed to the public.

Bridge into Falloden

See also 'The Destruction of the Winchester College Wingnuts'

Sunday 16 March 2014

Winchester College 50 Years On Dinner

Flint Court, School, Chapel and Chantry Cloisters
The Winchester College Society held a 50 years-on dinner in School on 15th March 2014. In fact it was for the leavers in the 1963, 1964 and 1965 years and about seventy people attended. The Warden-Elect, Charles Sinclair and David Fellowes presided and I replied for the old boys.

Sixes played in Meads
We watched Sixes being being played in the afternoon (OTH v Commoners) and attended Compline in the Chapel before dinner.

Compline in chapel

The Dinner

The Dinner Guests (photo by Andy Sollars)

School at night
For my address at the dinner, click here

For more photos from the event, click here

Monday 17 February 2014

Stockbridge and the Storms of February 2014

Stockbridge before a storm

The town of Stockbridge has been facing the risk of flooding for the past two weeks as a result of the storms and heavy rains that have swept the country. The local flood coordinators hand delivered
a guide to residents on 7th February warning them what to do to minimise the risk of flooding and sandbags were issued by the Test Valley Council to be placed in doorways and over air bricks to prevent potential water entry.

The River Test above Stockbridge on 15th February 2014
By 14th February the water meadows above the town were widely flooded and the River Test had risen to its highest point - 9ft - on the marker at the main road bridge. But as the storms passed on 15th, only two properties in the fields above the town, one at the lower end of the High St and two on the Houghton Road reported water ingress - mostly from under the floor. The main river and the subsidiary channels across the High St were in full flood but water didn't escape their banks except where this was intended - as in the water meadows. With better weather forecast this week, it looks as if the threat of flooding has somewhat receded.

Even at it's highest point, the main river was flowing three feet below the road bridge and so there was no risk of it backing up - as it had when parts of the town flooded in 1963 because the river could't get under the low narrow arches of the old bridge that the present bridge replaced. The river keepers opened sluices to allow the river to spread as widely as possible over the water meadows and they kept the channels flowing smoothly, clearing branches and other debris as soon as it fell.*


View Larger Map

The Test rises at Ashe just short of Basingstoke, about 17 miles from Stockbridge, and flows over slight gradients through water meadows, chalk farmland and villages, being joined by the Bourne at Whitchurch and the River Anton at The Mayfly before reaching the town, so it can never gain the volume of a long river like the Thames. Nevertheless the water table remains extraordinarily high and the flow experienced over this weekend was impressive, so only great care taken with its management even in good weather will allowed it to continue to pass through the town without causing significant damage.


Rainfall map for January 2014

I have just seen the rainfall map above showing January rainfall for the UK and am interested to see that Hampshire is part of the area that has experienced the highest rainfall of all. It will be fascinating to see the map for February, but it does bring home how fortunate we have been in Stockbridge and how well designed and managed the river defences have been.

PS: The rainfall map for the early part of February confirms this winter to be the wettest on record, and the areas most affected are much as in January the map above.   

For photos taken from 7th February to 7th March 20-14 in and around Stockbridge, click here 

*The real heroes of that flood were Ray Hill, manager of the Houghton Fishing Club and his team who were out all night every night making sure that no trees and/or other detritus had fallen into the river and were impeding the free flow downstream.  Had they not done this, in very short order, the water level above the obstruction would have risen and serious flooding would have occurred above and beyond that which did.  Frequently they had to enter the water up to their armpits to reach and clear obstructions, all by the light of hand held lamps.  It was VERY dangerous work, because at any  moment a large tree could have borne down on one or other of them out of the darkness and carried them away with irresistible force.   

Postscript from Roger Tym in 2018: Since then, the Houghton Club have installed two flood protection devices.  Above the bridge, there is now a spillway installed to ensure that the water level of that part of the river that ends up behind the Greyhound (and along the carrier that flows parallel to the High Street and about 300 yards N of it, ending more or less at the recreation ground - where it then flows S – or what is left of the flow),  is never higher than ordinary summer levels – which are c.2.5 feet above the level of the water in the river proper at the same latitude.

The second device is a by-pass weir and gate at Kingsmere Weir, about 150 yards below the bridge.  If ALL the boards are taken out of this device, which is 8 ft wide,  the water level of the river above the bridge drops by some 1.5 ft.
These two measures should ensure that the north of Stockbridge should not flood again from excess surface water levels in the system.  They will NOT prevent long term ground water flooding both N and S of the High Street if there is prolonged rainfall in the Autumn and Winter, but that amount of rainfall would now have to be very considerably in excess of that which we had four years ago.  This is because the flooding then was caused by a combination of both ground water and surface water excesses.
I am familiar with this because I got the funding for both schemes for the Club (£50k from TVBC and the County) and applied for and obtained planning permission for them, but the Club will forever have to maintain them..