Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

worlds (The Two Timers), interstellar warfare (The Palace of Eternity), alien invasion (The Ceres
Solution), the list goes on and on.
But the one aspect of Bob Shaw the man that seldom surfaced in his professional writing (though it
permeated his fan writing) was his wonderfully rich sense of humour. He wrote a regular column in Walt
Willis' fanzine Hyphen. The column was called The Glass Bushel (Bob felt that was the best sort of
bushel to hide your light behind). He contributed to many other fan publications. And he gave serious
scientific talks at conventions.
Nobody who attended one of these will ever forget them. A diffident, utterly stone faced Bob Shaw
would stand at the front of a crowded hall reading his talk from a prepared script and looking slightly
bemused at the gales of laughter wafting up from the audience.
...I hadn't had a drink for about half an hour, and you know how it is with booze -- a long period
of abstinence like that really whets your appetite for it. I think I may possibly have imbibed a little
too much because this morning I had a bad headache and there was no alka-seltzer or aspirin.
Luckily one of the committee was kind enough to nip out and get me some pain-killer they make
in a little shop just around the corner from here -- it's a local anaesthetic -- and that enabled me
to come here as planned and tell you all about the Bermondsey triangle mystery...
The jokes would build and build, outrage piling upon outrage. I do not exaggerate at all when I say that I
have seen people crying with laughter at Bob's talks, so weak with hysteria that they were incapable of
getting off their chair and walking for several minutes after Bob finished speaking. And not once did his
face slip. How he managed such perfect self control is beyond me.
But those of us who knew him will remember him not for his novels, his fan writing or his humour
(important though those things were), but for his wonderful personality. He was warm and friendly and
he loved to meet people and talk about anything under the sun for hours at a time. I knew Bob, on and
off, for nearly quarter of a century and I spent many, many delightful hours in his company. He stayed
in my house as a guest once and during that week I don't think I ever got to bed before about three in
the morning as we shared drinks and conversation. He was a man of whom it can truly be said that
everyone who met him loved him. I never, ever heard anyone say anything but good about Bob Shaw.
There were no "fan feuds" as far as Bob was concerned.
The day after Bob died I had to install a Unix operating system on a computer. One of the things this
requires you to do is give the computer a name. I called it jophan.