IRELAND, John. Date 2019.

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JOHN IRELAND (1942 to 2019)

A Tribute by Malcolm Barnett OI (1953-1960)

John and I joined Ipswich School in 1952/1953. He was in the scholastic year behind me but after a while we met in the sporting arena and also the school choir, where he eventually succeeded me as bass soloist. John was active in a number of sports but specialised in middle and long-distance running. Academically he shone in mathematics and the sciences and had an aptitude for carpentry (so useful for a future surgeon!). When it came to Latin, my main memory is of the Classics master, who was wont to translate surnames into Latin and addressed John as ‘Hibernicus’.

 To me John was a splendid fellow, outgoing and warm-hearted. He took a healthy interest in others and was prepared to help those in need. He was also a bit of a rebel and not averse to the odd adventure, not always with official sanction. On one occasion he and a couple of classmates, all still in their early teens, pretended to their parents that they were to spend half-term at one another’s homes but in fact held a competition to see who could travel the furthest on a specified, extremely limited budget, hitch-hiking and sleeping under the hedge. As proof, they were required to bring back a menu, pinched from a café or restaurant at their furthest destination. John arrived back early on the Monday morning brandishing a menu from a town in Shropshire, which was an unthinkable distance away.

 On another occasion, he and a school friend, who like John was an adept sailor and a sea scout, stole out of the school in the middle of the night taking with them their bicycles. They rode down to the mooring on the Orwell where the school’s sailing boat was kept and, under the light of a full moon, and in a race against the tide, they pushed off, sailing down-river to the estuary, and then putting out to sea. Their heading was towards the Cork Lightship, which lay at anchor guarding sand banks some way off Harwich. Once they had made it to the lightship, they rounded it, and then, racing back in and up-river before the tide ran out, moored the boat, rode back to school and sneaked back into the boarding house, un-noticed.

Although we were both boarders John’s home was located close to the school, so he was able to pop home from time to time and often took me with him. His parents and two younger sisters Helen and Sarah were delightful and always made me feel at home. I was studying the piano, as was little Sarah, and Helen and her school-friend Judith were studying the flute. So sometimes we played music together. John’s mother Mina Ireland presided at the dining-table. She was great fun and enjoyed lively conversation. More importantly she made sure we had plenty to eat as school food was not too appealing. His father Mike Ireland, a noted oral surgeon and jaw specialist, used to invite us into the drawing-room to listen to chamber music on his splendid electronic equipment - usually over a glass of sherry as we got a bit older. The talent for practical physics clearly ran in the family: in the days of its infancy, John’s father had built one of the first television sets, with sound, that any of us had seen.

All through our school days and beyond, people used to comment on how much John and I looked alike and we were often taken to be brothers. Having left school in 1960/1961, we each headed for London where I read law at University College and John studied medicine at Kings and the Westminster Hospital, and in due course found ourselves sharing a flat in Pimlico. In 1968 after qualifying as a solicitor I flew off to Hong Kong to join a firm of solicitors. John came to visit me in May 1972 on the way home from his stint in New Guinea. Apparently he had worked rather hard at the hospital - and the most common injuries were battered heads from falling coconuts! He arrived at Kai Tak airport looking slightly disheveled in shorts and a beard, clutching a large net over his shoulder which he used as a knapsack. He was pleasantly surprised to find that, as I was at work, my then girl-friend Anita had come to pick him up in her chauffeur-driven Mercedes.

In September 1972 John got married to the lovely Shahla and settled down very happily with her and in due course their three children, Michael, Roya and David. Sadly I was unable to make it to the wedding having just started a new job in Hong Kong, but did at least attend the church service held in 1997 to celebrate the renewal of their vows after 25 years of marriage. Despite the distances involved we have kept in close touch and I have always valued the time spent with John and Shahla and the family. Apart from the usual socializing we have attended innumerable concerts and exhibitions over the years. We have also shared a passion for collecting antique clocks and oil-paintings by the East Anglian artist Edward Seago, who captured so brilliantly the seas and skies of our youth.

Thank you John for the pleasure of your friendship over some six and a half decades, particularly during our formative years. You were indeed the brother I never had!