I have always been a sucker for books. Sadly, good bookshops are a dying breed but here in Broome we have one. A shout out to the Kimberley Bookshop where the lovely Gayle and I were shopping for local history and natural history books. In the bird section we know many of the authors personally, the world of truly obsessed birdos is relatively small. There’s probably not enough of us to keep more than a couple of psychiatrists in business. I turned to remark on this when I saw a name on a different shelf that came as a complete surprise.
Let me take you back 50 years. I was a junior House Officer employed by the United Sheffield Hospitals. The ink was still wet on my degree certificate, my job entailed no executive authority what ever, I was there to do as I was told, mostly by the nursing staff. Towering high above me were the gods in my pantheon, Professor Sir Paul Bramley, scholar, gentleman and an inspiration; the irascible Ronnie Rastall, exceedingly skillful hands but a devil if you were on the end of a bollocking and John Edgar deBurgh Norman, brilliant, aloof and eccentric – black cloaks with scarlet linings were not fashionable even in those remote times.
J E deB was Australian and subsequently returned home and practised as an Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeon in Sydney whilst I did likewise in Melbourne. Subsequently our paths crossed only once, at a conference at which I was in the chair. Even though I was dry behind the ears by then I couldn’t summon up the confidence to remind him that we had once worked together (or that he had once resuscitated a patient who had collapsed whilst in my tender care).
Back to the present and there on the shelf …
They just don’t make names like that any more. In fact, where I come from they never did. It had to be. And indeed it was. Not only is the man distinguished in his own right he is pearling nobility, a scion of one of Broome’s founding families. G V Norman is Verity, his wife now, sadly, dead.
What were the odds?
Interesting book, by the way.
bobmcgee 