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Professor Gus John |
Gun campaigner is still in touch with his soulful Grenada roots
I KNOW Professor Gus John for his gritty work with relatives and victims of gun violence – he recently gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee on Young Black People in Crime.
So the sight of him serenading soulful classics to a room full of pensioners in the Marriott Hotel in West Hampstead took me a bit by surprise.
He was accompanied by the unmistakable sounds of Gerald Forsythe’s New Sensations Steel Band.
The band plays every year at the annual celebration of In Touch, a successful service helping the home-alone socialise with each other over the phone, which marked its 10th anniversary in the hotel restaurant on Friday.
Professor John told me: “We spontaneously decided to ‘bust some old favourites’ for the elders to help celebrate In Touch’s massive achievements – the biggest of all being the fact that they survived for 10 years, despite cuts and challenges, under the inspirational and visionary leadership and sound management of Joy Fraser.
“I graduated on Gregorian Chant as a former Dominican friar and it is in the context of St Dominic’s, Gospel Oak, that I first met Joy’s mum and family over three decades ago.
“We also happen to be from the same country, Grenada, where there is a strong Roman Catholic tradition. So, I know how to sing, sort of, but I am not a professional singer.
“Gerald Forsythe and I worked together in Hackney, I as director of education and Leisure and he as peripatetic music tutor.”
Celebrating the life of an ‘ordinary woman’
I MET the elderly woman Maudlyn Joseph twice last year when she was in the latter stages of her degenerative disease.
She sat in an easy chair, surrounded by medical apparatus, breathing with difficulty but still focused and formidably bright.
Maudlyn – known among hundreds of Trinidad families in north London as Aunty Maudlyn – died the day after Boxing Day at the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead at the age of 72.
She typified the thousands of West Indians who came to these shores in the 1950s and early 1960s and filled key jobs in transport and hospitals.
Maudlyn set out to become a nurse, training at the famous Charing Cross Hospital and finally becoming established as a ward sister at the old Friern Barnet Mental Hospital.
Six years ago she made the headlines in this newspaper after she had sent an angry letter to the Royal Free because she had been moved out of her bed at 2am and deposited in a corridor for eight hours – without oxygen back-up – until a doctor saw her.
But apart from that Maudlyn was never in the public limelight; she got on with her life, a friendly soul, but passionate about one thing – the Notting Hill carnival, and any other carnival in the world she could find time to visit.
She didn’t play an instrument but she used her ability to command attention, part of the skill of a good nurse, to help run one of the top costume bands in the Notting Hill carnival, the Burrowkeets.
After her retirement 15 years ago she delighted every year in going to carnivals in New York, Toronto and Trinidad.
An ordinary woman? Perhaps. But it’s because such people rarely make the pages of a newspaper that I wanted to pay my homage to Aunty Maudlyn.
Recently, a French cabinet minister asked why immigrants who had come from parts of the old British Empire were not allowed to go to Britain although they spoke English while thousands of immigrants were allowed in from eastern Europe.
I’ve asked the same question once or twice in this column.
Many of the ancestors of those from the old Empire fought for this country in both world wars. Why discriminate against them now?
A popular woman, it didn’t surprise me to discover that more than 250 mourners crowded into St Mary’s Church in Tottenham on Monday to honour Auntie Maudlyn – several flew here from Canada and Trinidad.
Honour for school nurse
A CASUAL visitor to St Clement Danes primary school in Covent Garden would, perhaps, hardly be aware of the presence of the school’s nurse, Carol Leonard .
Yet without the exuberant devotion of a St Clement Danes’ nurse, how would it operate?
Thankfully, Carol’s work was recognised with an MBE in the New Year Honours list.
Carol, 58, has been a fixture at the school since 1984 – always available to tend to nose bleeds, grazed knees and dreaded head lice infestations.
She said: “I am chuffed to bits that I’m able to receive such an award for doing something that gives me so much joy alongside such wonderful children. It still feels like I just started. Now I’ve even got parents sending their kids to nursery that I used to look after!
“The fact that I was nominated for this by the parents of the children that I have been blessed to work with and care for makes this award even more precious – I am truly honoured.”
Typically, in her spare time Carol has served as group scout leader of the 75th Lambeth scout group for 24 years.
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