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VALE: Jock Orr
by Stuart Tuttlebury
I am not surprised that we had trouble with an obituary for
Jock. He was the sort of person you knew
and admired but really knew very little about. There was always so much going on, and he never said much about himself.
He will always be remembered for his sense of humour, his
cave photography in the late 1960s, and the wonderful drawings he produced
which complemented the magnificent word craft of Alfie Collins for the book
Reflections, which was also produced in the late 60s. Jock was Hut Engineer for a spell and
although I was not around then, I am sure that he put all his skills and effort
into the job.
We all have our memories, but one of mine is the impish
smile on his face when he showed me the slides of his fire eating episode taken
one Christmas at the Belfry. Those that
were there will remember the charred remains of the decorations hanging from the
ceiling, and the flames issuing forth from the mouths of Jock and his
disciples.
The little that I have learned and witnessed about Jocks
life over the years has made a big impression on me. He served in the Second World War in
Italy, sustaining a severe leg wound firing
field guns from a distance at the Germans as he put it, and in
Yugoslavia
supporting the resistance fighters. He
had a son and a daughter by his first wife, and four younger sisters, and
married Judith in 1974. I met him at
work in 1966 where he was inspecting mechanical components for armaments (bomb
and missile fuses). His skills included
tool making and technical drawing, and I am sure others that I knew nothing
about. The meticulous car maintenance
that he carried out, included taking everything from under the car, cleaning
and painting with bitumen paint before reassembling, plus much use of glass
fibre for body work. The jobs around the
home that were carried out, from constructing a soak away in the drive,
faultlessly tiling the bathroom (he did admit a mistake - but I could not find
it) to all the wiring, plumbing, redesigning and building etc. The 10ft became his office, just like the
drawing in the back of the book Reflections - and his artistic skills were set
on one side as being a complete waste of time compared to home making!
For at least the last fifteen years of his life, Jock and
Judith were working on turning a plot of land on the west coast of
Scotland
into a home, inspired by a holiday in a croft west of Mellon Udrigle in
1985. Jock did all the design work and
drawings, they negotiated their way through all of the planning legalities, and
got to levelling the site and installing electricity and water, which Jock
thoroughly enjoyed helping the contractors with. They then had to take stock and decided to
sell and return to their bungalow near
Lincoln
for the winter.
Those of us who knew Jock I am sure will never forget him,
he will live on in our memories.
