~numb~

 

i never considered that i would be writing a blog post like this

in fact i don't know if i will even publish it, now or ever

 

maybe i am writing this to try to make sense of what has happened and if i publish it i suppose it will be in the hope that it is part of the process i am going through, an echo of the process my old friends are going through with me, in our respective spheres of life. the process a family is now going through.

 

let me take you back a long time

 

back when i was in college a small group of friends formed, we were all local village teenagers going to the college here.

 we were old enough to have gained some independence and trust from our families, old enough to go to the local pub, usually on nights when we could listen to the 'real ale and thunder band'~although talking yesterday * and  i were wondering how we could ever afford it for none of us had jobs~our college work was the only work we had.
 

when not in college we would descend on *'s parents house which had become our second home, we would go through the kitchen like locusts, spend time in the converted shed talking and listening to music, have bonfires on a parents allotment and cook decidedly dodgy potatoes and sausages over the fire while P gave us rides across the open forest on his 'chickenchaser'. one cold and icy winter we played 'ice hockey' on a frozen pond with golf clubs using a tin of cat food as a puck and in the summer baseball using gorse bushes as bases.
 none of us could drive so anywhere we went was by push bike~this was the days before parents would buy teenagers a bright shiny car and we certainly couldn't afford to buy even the most beaten up old banger.

 

one summer we stayed in a small beach hut on mudeford spit~if i remember rightly there were 8 of us and two dogs squeezed into the tiny hut that had sleeping room for four~we had cycled to hengistbury head, loaded our bags onto the noddy train and cycled down to mudeford spit where we reclaimed our bags and moved into the beach hut. my abiding memory of this time was one night was one of the boys singing 'Summertime'~i have loved that song ever since, but when hearing it, it is him still singing.

 

even now years later it was the best summer, really the best ever summer...

~two weeks later~

well time passed, we all followed our own paths, some of us leaving the forest for a few years, some longer. while we were all following our paths some kept in physical touch, some through the internet, sometimes we met by accident, sometimes we tracked each other down but there was always a connection, somewhere, somehow that kept us linked and knowing how we were all doing.

so the years passed

two weeks ago * came to my house with the news that ^ had finally reached the decision that this life was too hard to continue living~he had taken his final journey the night before.

^ was a sweet, funny and very talented man and even now with two weeks having passed when i let my mind focus on what happened and all the usual whys and wherefores i cant really take it in. one abiding thought was why did i not send him the e-mail i sat down to write only a month earlier? i don't think any email from anyone would have altered his course in this life, but i like to think that maybe my words would have raised a smile.