'Can you hear the drums...?'

Last evening, while we were out with David, I saw a Tweet from my friend Andrea saying that her partner, Simon, had passed away. This had been long expected, yet also seemed quite sudden; in the last couple of days the Minx had shown me a characteristically brave and cheery farewell post from him on Facebook but, I don't know, I didn't think it would be that quick. 

Even if I couldn't really get my head around it last night, I knew it would would dominate my thoughts today while I was out running. I first met him on a tweet up in London just before I met the Minx. I didn't know who he was, then, although I started following him on Twitter after that. He was a writer and subeditor at The Guardian but it was on Twitter where, for me, he really shone. 

He was smart and funny, kind and also prone to posting cute clips of small animals. I don't know how he coped with all of the many responses to his every post but he appeared to be uniformly kind. He was, in so many respects, the best of Twitter. I wouldn't want to suggest that his gradual withdrawal from the platform has been part of the reason it's become so dreadful - that would be ridiculous - but it seems horribly symbolic. 

The last time I saw him was in Edinburgh, last year. The Minx and I went out with him and Andrea, and Shelagh. Although I think he was already quite ill, you wouldn't have known it. And even though he was just as funny and sharp in person as on Twitter, there was never any hint of "the big I am". He was incredibly generous in conversation. It seems a terrible understatement to simply say he was a lovely man but he was. Someone to aspire to. 

Although I felt very sad while I was running, it also felt good to have to thought about him without distraction, to have given him the time in my head, if that makes sense. (I don't doubt he will be there for a while to come.) 

I distracted myself from dwelling on that sadness by recording the radio show - the best of 2018 - in the afternoon and in the evening, we - me, the Minx, the miniMinx, and Dom - all went to see David's performance at the Bridgewater Hall: Abba's greatest hits, backed by the Hallé Orchestra. 

Now Abba might not be my bag, these days, but when we lived in Hong Kong, around the age of ten, I guess, I was a very big fan. Hence, even now, forty years later, I knew pretty much all of the tunes, this evening. The performances by David and his colleagues were fantastic and although it seems daft to focus on something trivial when his singing was so amazing, I was impressed he could dance in the platform heels!

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Reading: 'The Quantum Astrologer's Handbook' by Michael Brooks