Last night I cracked. A fissure opened up inside, and at the same time a scar was hardening. I realised I carry everyone, friendships and family, I carry them in my veins, all that love is stored. I didn’t know how my old friend and flat mate had died and for various reasons, I wasn’t able to attend his wake, which was delayed because of the pandemic. This is a friend I haven’t seen for many years, one lost in the momentum of life but he meant something, in my own journey. I needed my own ritual to remember him, so I opened up my computer to write this.
I realise you only really remember a collection of moments of any one person, you could add them up in seconds but they are the visions you see clearest when you think of them.
Alan would just do nice stuff without thinking about it, he would say something either simple and kind or profound and insightful, and it showed he was working out instinctively, how he could help you. It was surprising at first and then it was comforting and familiar. He cared about everyone in his own casual, collected way. It seemed unconditional.
I knew him in those golden twenty something years. There was one day, when I was trying to kill a hangover from the usual outrageous Friday night with an ill-thought-out early morning Saturday swim in a wind-beaten, Bournemouth seascape. Out there in the choppy occean, it was hyperthermia that I was going through, I realise that in retrospect, and it made it impossible to think, or understand which way it was to the beach or the watery horizon. I was in trouble, and out of the visual fog of grey waves there was a solitary figure sitting on the beach looking at me, with sand skittering up in his unflinching face, it was Alan, who had come with me for the venture. He was a beacon, a solid marker to focus on and swim back to. I think maybe he saved me that day, just by being there. As I staggered up the deserted beach with teeth chattering, he took one look at me and advised me to eat an early morning burger quick-smart, which I did, like an emergency medical procedure.
We both drank heavily but it wasn’t the drink, we were addicted to simple adventures, good company and talking out our thoughts. He had a lot of brilliant thoughts to talk out. Everything, all the time, became a great story to conjure and create, like we were alchemists of amazing events.
On the way back from the Jug of Ale pub, a once glorious temple of socialising now long-vanished from the high street, we would often ‘discover’ a hotel swimming pool and hot tub for a late-night swim and soak, living a life moment we could not afford on our meagre wages. One night the hotel manager came out with purpose, and stood there poolside with two of his staff, staring at us silently with his arms folded. We hauled ourselves out of the water, smiled, apologised awkwardly, and strutted off down the road in the dead of night, clothes bundled up in arms, wearing only boxers and dripping wet, the rain adding to the nonsense of the scene.
It was the days I was editing paranormal magazines, in the times of X-Files and all things UFO. He would sometimes be my work buddy, managment gave us a little freedom like that (it wasn’t technically his job as the IT guy), going out to God knows where, to talk to witnesses, to stand in ornate corn circles alongside cultish groups on sunny days near Stone Henge. He would talk about sightings that were reported to the magazine and we would get lost in ideas of what any of it meant, and which bits were real or crazy. We would enjoy imagining how big the Universe was. He had a very open mind.
I remember our distinctive ‘beer march’, the synchronised goose-step through the park toward our pub of choice. It was the utter joy of anticipation. I remember us laughing till it hurt, I remember eating in pubs on weekend noons, and meandering through town. I remember the crazy little nightclub where we would try to crawl up the unusually wide chimney stack from the empty fireplace and I would often do ‘the worm’ on the dancefloor badly for the dare alone, whilst he stood in bemusement with a pint in hand.
I remember his unquashable hatred of a stiff, ancient settee we had in our gloomy lounge. When we were about to move out, I discovered him axing the awful thing in half to remove it. The sight of him swinging an axe to massacre a settee was fantastic to behold.
Al was also a technician, he would know how everything worked at the publishing house we were in, he was the master of servers, plug-in things and software. Like a brain of the company’s infrastructure, he was completely indispensable. He was there in a similar way to hold everyone together in that sprawling, messy, open-plan office. His hot, bleeping server room was like a dark sci-fi sanctuary away from the madding crowd, and he was a priest of listening, happy to be there recieving anyone’s issues. He did not have one enemy, and everyone could go to Al to talk about anything.
The last time I saw him was in a pub and he told me with pride he was a father. Strangely, I could only ever imagine him being a father, as he was such solid father material.
On the night I learned he had died, I dreamed vividly of him casually crouching next to a wall and looking up, with that calm thoughfulness, saying something like, ‘it’s all right’, even in my dreams, just being there – like there is nothing to really worry about. It’s unfathomable the world is now missing his unique energy.
Goodnight Al, rest in peace.
Writer for Hire 