I was devastated to hear of the passing of my great friend John Mason at the end of last year. Just in case any members aren’t aware of this sad news, I thought I’d put a few words on here. As many of you will know, John was a former treasurer of the HSP Group, a role that he held for several years. We were so lucky to have found such a thorough treasurer and with some great assistance from his wife Sonya, kept our accounts up to date with great precision. What many of you may not realise is that John was far more than a Treasurer. I worked very closely with him, during my time on the board and he was occasionally known to reign trustees back, when we had crazy and over ambitious ideas, especially when these involved spending the charities money. However, he had a gift for knowing what was right and what was wrong and was the first to support ideas and activities that may have initially appeared to be of some risk.
John and I worked very closely together and developed not only a great working relationship, but also a very close friendship. John was also a great supporter of regional meetings and from his experience of being a regular attendee at the Ashburton meetings in Devon, he realised the importance of physically getting people with HSP together. For this reason, John and I had at least a couple of expeditions involving at least one overnight stay, where we tried setting up other meetings around the country. St Helens and Ipswich are two locations that come to mind. These occasions and any other trips we had, usually involved a curry and a drink or two and have resulted in some great memories.
He was very good with IT and compiled a very comprehensive database for the HSP Group enabling membership records to be kept and enabling communications within the Group. Many of you will realise that prior to Pip Lee taking over the role of Newsletter editor, and doing such an amazing job, I compiled 55 editions of the HSP Newsletter. I always liked the Newsletter to be up to a reasonable standard so prior to publishing it, I circulated around a team of people, mainly HSP members, who were my proofreaders. I really appreciated any errors these people highlighted, but interestingly, where most people usually came back to me with a short list of amendments. John’s list was always considerably more comprehensive. He was an was an expert in the English language and particularly grammar and I massively appreciated his input here.
For a few years, committee meetings were often held in a pub near Sturminster Newton in Dorset, which is located halfway between where John lived in Trowbridge and where I live in Wimborne. Our secretary, David Harris, like me, a Dorst resident, would also attend these and once the HSP formalities had been completed, we always enjoyed each other’s company, John’s wife Sonya would always accompany us to these and indeed nearly every other HSP event we attended, and she also became a very good friend of mine over the years and I’ll make sure I keep in touch with her.
My fondest memories of John are the social ones, the drinks and food we had together. I remember John had a gift for selecting the worst item on the menu and then being very jealous of my choice, but he always managed to laugh at this. I remember him staying at my music festival until the early hours before returning to his hotel on his mobility scooter. We seemed to be on a similar wavelength, and I’ll never forget the laughs we had together over many years.
My condolences go out to Sonya and family. I learnt such a lot from John. I will always miss him and his great sense of humour, and I’ll never forget this very special man.
Ian Bennett