Mad About The Boy

Seven years ago this weekend my best friend died. This is not aboy how or why he died. This is about how he lived. 

I first met him at school. He was from north Yorkshire and a boarder. I lived locally so went home. 

He was clever but not overly, small, dark, with NHS glasses. Harry Potter looks a bit like him.  Like me, in the top set for everything. Except, surprisingly, maths.  Fitted in with the crowd but wasnt one  Very bookish and quiet, loved watching rugby (and had a seat at the Scotland ground) but physical activity was an anathema. I have a badminton raquet with his name on it. He may have played squash too. I'm not sure!. The quiet ones are the worst. And here's how

At the age of 14 he was brewing wine in his study. Everyone knew. No one did anything. He could drink prodigious amounts, far more than me even though I was 6" taller. Never seemed to suffer.  

One term he stole every stick of chalk in every physics class. Every class the teacher couldn't find them. Part time through the term he lined up the chalk very carefully on the back of the rotating blackboard. The teacher pulled the board down with gusto and.... Yes. We laughed.  At the end of term every stick was returned to him carefully wrapped and labelled as an Xmas present.

One lesson he swapped seats with every other pupil in the class. The teacher only noticed when he was sitting in the teacher's seat. How can you punish that?

Another class he moved the clock forward to delay the start of lesson and back at the end. A 40 minute lesson in 30 minutes. 

One lesson he got caught for something minor. When the teacher asked what he was doing he replied "nothing". He was given an an essay as punishment: write two sides of A4  about nothing. The teacher was so impressed with the essay he read it out in class. Even being naughty he was clever and funny.  

We always had fun with music. He had lots of tapes I used to borrow. Tapes others had done for him. Starting with his 70s Rock Dinosaurs (he was a big Led Zep and Deep Purple fan; he always said he was born 20 years too late) right up to modern folk.       

He ran an enterprise. From the age of 15 every Wednesday and Saturday he'd walk the mile or so into town and come back, pockets stuffed and clinking, to sell off sweets, pop, porn, half bottles of whisky at hugely inflated prices. Not to be an entrepreneur but because he shouldn't, and he was quietly bucking the system. Stick it to the man. Despite all this he was top 5 in every subject. 

During the holidays he often came to visit and I went up to North Yorkshire. I'd call him and for some reason it was always echoey. He always seemed to be having a poo when I called. It speaks volumes.  My mum loved having him. Her second son. I enjoyed him too. Trips to his favourite local for Theakston's Old Peculier or trips into Sheffield for 'roger and out' at the Frog and Parrot. 

At the end of school I went to Newcastle and he to St Andrews to do medicine. Deeply private I never knew what he was up to. On the few trips i made up there I did meet a lot of his friends. They of course knew what he was like and loved him deeply. I still hear from them now. I wouldn't hear from him for 3 months but it didn't matter. When I did call him or he me we just picked up.

Sartorial elegance was never his thing. There was a spate of tie cutting. Every now and again someone cut a half inch swatch off his tie. 5 years later it was the only tie he wore. I bet it was the same blazer too that fitted where it touched. 

At the end of the first year, he and I and two other school friends headed off interrailing for four weeks, a clockwise trip through Belgium Holland Germany Austria, down into Greece, across to Italy and France. We called it Europless. And how we were. Finally we worked his look. One of us (I hasten to add wasn't me) gave him a makeover. From having comb forward hair we brushed it back: piercing blue eyes, dark hair, a young Clint Eastwood. But what a dark horse. We always joked that his dad was a ringer for "the murderer John Christie" and that he'd be bald by the time he was 24. We were very wrong. Had he wanted to be he could have been a ladykiller. The women he attracted just wanted to mother him. He probably needed it.  

We spent many a long night travelling across Europe. We had a running game of cheat. If you don't know, the deck is dealt and the first person puts down cards  of a number (3  kings etc). The next person has to follow with either kings, aces or queens. What you put down and what you say don't have to match. If you question you say "cheat". If you're right they get the deck. If they didn't, you get the deck. He could put down half a dozen cards, say anything and be utterly believable.

At 7 stone wet through he was the original fatboy.he's the reason I too am a fatboy. I'm proud to bear the nickname he gave me. Lardiness isn't a physical thing, it's a state of mind.  His beer intake was matched only by his hollow legs. If he wasn't being fatboy he was tin ribs. I've seen him put away 7 pizzas (the all you can eat places must have hated him) and complain he couldn't fit a beer on top. 

After uni, he moved to Manchester to complete his medicine. I stayed with him as I worked in a cardboard factory in Timperley (Frank Sidebottom, genius) to  earn money to go to Oz. I knew he wasn't happy. But couldn't get at him. The medicine wasn't working. He was in it for family tradition but it wasn't him. He was a gentle soul and couldn't face hurting people even to fix them We had fun eating cheese and drinking beer. Pretty much it. Then I went to Oz for a year.

Of all my so called friends he was the only one who wrote back. When you're away from home for so long (pre internet, pe mobile phone its all Poste Restante) it meant a lot. Not only did he write, he sent me a tshirt. I still have it. You can't imagine how much it meant to me. Other than mum and dad, I may be on the trip of a lifetime but to hear from real people made such a difference. Thank you. 

On my return I got a job in North Wales.He ws in Manchester, I was in Llandudno, about 90 mins apart. We spent many a happy weekend up mountains or in castles. We did go to the vast majority. He was a huge history fan  he had his heritage card and loved a trip round a castle or a walk up a mountain. Another activity invented was dogging. Not the modern version but Death Or Glory: 4 people in a Citroën AX diesel. On corners the appropriate side would open the door and lean out (safety belts attached) in a vain effort to stop the car rolling. Apparently we went faster. A sif it mattered in an AX. 

Modus Operandi was I got a call saying "what are you doing tonight?" "nothing" "good 'cos I'm at the bottom of your road". There's lucky. 

About this time I got an invite to go with him and his friends to the Cambridge Folk Festival. I joined an old tradition which continued for about 10 years. Happy times: 3 days of beer and music. We drank beer, ate EBRs (egg bacon rolls) for breakfast, sang silly songs and danced badly to zydeco and other stuff you'd be lucky to hear if you weren't Andy Kershaw's neighbour. During the day we'd queue up outside the Salisbury Arms, buy beer at the real ale off licence, then punting.    

 It was increasinly clear he and medicine weren't friends. It was a matter of getting a decent exit strategy. His friends petitioned the Dean of Medicine and a deal was struck  Eventually he graduated and I got a job in Cambridge so we both moved down and he stayed with me. With contacts he started working in real ale pubs. He was a hit. Everyone loved him. He moved out and into the pub. He got to know a lot of the people in the Cambridge beer trade and was highly respected. 

Then I got a call. "It's non Hodgekins Leukemia". There was only one thing for it. He came back to live with me. I lived a mile from Addrnbrooke's and he had to go twice a week. A proper brave soldier, twice a week he'd go in for treatment, and by that night he barely left his room. He would be off his food and barely left his room until he started feeling human again. That was the morning of his next treatment. 

He kept this up for 3 months, barely eating. I left food for him and we had some time together. But it wasn't much. We had a ceremonial hair shaving before it fell out. The stuff they were giving him was so fierce I had to change the bathroom carpet. 

But finally we got the good news he was in remission. Physically and mentally he wasn't the same. Yes at first glance he was but he was withdrawn. Strange oblique comments, at first glance innocuous but then. Less so. He became a licencee and landlord. I hoped it would be a new start, a new challenge. I only saw him once in his new venture. Within three months he was dead. 

At his funeral, arranged by his beer trade friends I insisted I said something. I knew not one of them would do him justice. I doubted I would but I gave it a stab. So I gave "the Best Man's Speech I Never Got To Give". Afterwards, "the Murderer John Christie" said the cancer he had survived would have taken him before he was 40.

Epilogue 
Last March I went to a wedding. It ws dthe first meetup for a lot of us since the wedding. One consultant surgeon had had a nervous breakdown. A lot couldn't understand. What is there to understand? What is there to understand? Just accept. There were tears and tantrums from 1 to 6am? It was a long long night. I hope for their sakes they cope. 

For me I don't have to understand. It doesn't matter I can't hope him back. My Grandma Smith said "you can hope in one hand and shit in the other; see which grows faster". I have his picture in my family photos. I hear a song or a joke and think "I'll just call.... Oh".

I can't call him. I can't speak to him. But he will always be here.