Then there were Seven

Just as I headed off to bed, I received a sad email from Anne that our old pal DrP had passed away. Four of us young boys had gone down to Tavistock just before Christmas to see him before MND really laid him low. Andy was always such a loud, lively character with such a great irreverent sense of fun, that it’s really hard to think he’s gone. And like my good self, he could be a wonderfully opinionated bore. I still remember him holding forth on the decline of Britain which he traced with unerring accuracy to Harold Wilson’s cancellation of the Handley Page Herald. Ha!
 Some twenty odd years ago, as a group of 30 and 40 somethings, we termed ourselves the Shandon Senior Service Crew and some time after that, with our in house website the Shandon Mince up and running, I did a little game called Blotto Lotto Infinito on it, to predict what your odds were of lasting five hogmanays. There were nine of us then; now we’ve lost a couple of stalwarts. Those odds are shortening for all of us, I guess.

Back to the living - I managed to take in Ida up at the Cameo after work as I was keen to see after it had won best foreign language film at the Oscars. Just beautifully filmed so it was. It reminded me of so many of those earnest wistful films which eastern Europe regularly produced. Earnest and wistful is probably totally incorrect, but hey, I’ve got one eye on Man City v Barcelona. Cut me some slack.