Portsmouth Road and an absent friend

I went out for a run, this morning. I thought I'd do eight miles or so, so I ran from my folks' house, heading west out through Berrylands until I reached the Thames, whence I headed south down the Portsmouth Road.

Whenever I run along here, I I think of my friend Gareth Jones, who lived on this road in a block of apartments called the Hermitage. We both worked at Aerospace in Weybridge and became friends after I accosted him in the office one day to ask if the badge he was wearing was a "Zildjian Z". He was pleasantly surprised that I'd spotted it and I was glad to meet another music lover in an office full of computer programmers (they weren't developers in those days).

It turned out that Gareth was a bassist and a rather good one at that. He knocked around with quite a few musicians, too. He was friends with Nick Beggs, the bassist from Kajagoogoo, Mel Gaynor, from Simple Minds (whom I met in Gareth's flat once), and a session drummer called Robbie, who'd played with someone big in the 70s.

I once sang on stage with him, actually, and Robbie's wife, a session singer, was also there. I didn't know the song, in fact I think pretty much everyone was improvising. Afterwards, Robbie's wife asked if I wanted to sing backing vocals on Spandau Ballet's world tour but I thought she might be teasing me and, anyway, I had my own band (which was better than the Spands).

I lost touch with Gareth when I moved north in 1990: staying in contact was a lot more difficult back then; there was no email and no mobile 'phones. Over the last few years I've tried to find him but there are too many Gareth Jones out there and a lot of them seem to be musicians! But, being philosophical about it, I guess he could find me easily enough if he wanted to, so maybe just to leave the past to itself.

Back to today, then, and as I ran down Portsmouth Road, I was tempted to stay by the river but decided to stay on the pavement, which diverged away from the water after a little while. There is a series of large pools that occupy the space between the road and the river but I've no idea what they were used for. The pale blue paint is peeling of the old, iron railings and there are signs warning people of deep water and to stay out, but nothing more informative than that. 

It all looks like it's been unused for years but, in the morning sun, it looked like a nice place for a picnic lunch.