His Benevolence The Extra Reverend Doctor Colin James Hamer
Baptised, 20 May 1934
Date of Birth: 18 April 1934
Confirmed, 30 April 1944
Altar-Server in the Parish
1939 - began to help his father who was a Milkman
"I remembered Bosco saying he would take good advice even from the devil."
And, thus, so did Colin James Hamer.
"On the afternoon of Saturday, 14 November 1987, I was just one of a large group of relatives and friends present on that occasion who had been invited to attend the marriage of Natasha McCarthy to John R. Pope-de-Locksley of 71 The Ridge, Dollis Valley, Barnetvale, Barnet, Hertfordshire EN5 2TT, in Saint Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, Highgate Hill, London N6, which is administered by Fathers of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, whose Monastery stands immediately adjoining the Church. Incidentally, this is the very Church in which the present President of the BPOS, David Farrant, married in August 1967 Mary Olden, an Irish lady he had met in Bordeaux while on a European tour. John and David first became acquainted with each other in 1973.
"By this time John himself wasn't only a prominent member and, indeed, the President of the London-based Robin Hood Club; he was also in regular contact with one of that association's friendly rival research-groups, the Yorkshire Robin Hood Society that Nurse Barbara Green, R.G.N., S.C.M., D.N., had founded in 1984.
"At the same time our hero was also one of the more colourful employees of the Department of the Environment's Fire Research Department Stores at Borehamwood; he began work there in 1974, having previously, after his boyhood in Worthing, received a private education at Winchester Lodge Preparatory School in Torquay and at Bishop's Palace Public School, Farnham.
"Although this civil-servant claims to have seen UFOs on several distinct occasions in his life, it was quite an ordinary plane that flew overhead as John pronounced his marriage vows that autumn afternoon. There was also nothing unusual about the well attended wedding-reception immediately after the service; it was held just across the road in the Old Crown Hotel, with drinks, a running buffet, music and dancing.
"Were Natasha's many relatives and friends present on that occasion fully aware of the true identity of John Pope-de-Locksley of Barnet? I suspect not. They may not even have been aware of this staunch patriot's unusually strong interest in British history generally, as well as in the many myths and legends of Robin Hood and his Merry Outlaws, and they certainly had no idea that even before the second millennium came to its end on 22 December 1999, Natasha's & John's life of marital bliss together would, at least so far as human minds and hearts may discern, have been 'on the rocks' for some time, John, not entirely unpredictably and far from uniquely (and I'm not only thinking of St. Peter), having felt 'the call' to 'higher things'!" - Colin Hamer (2006)
John Pope having a glass of ale in The Woodman with David Farrant in November 1973.
