Lawrence

A sad day today spent saying goodbye to a very old friend, Lawrence. He was about my age and died quite suddenly from a brain tumour. He had only been ill for a few months and his doctors thought the chemo was winning and that he was well on his way to being cured. The last contact I had with him was by proxy via my ex wife, Diana, who saw him just before Christmas and relayed our seasonal greetings between us, he never even let on he was ill and he seemed his normal self...which was absolutely like him. I hadn't seen much of him and Rosie and their children Hannah & Liam this last year even though we only live five minutes away from each other, all of us too busy dealing with the vicissitudes of life, always meaning to pop round, conscious it had been too long, somehow letting it slip knowing that when we did get round to it we'd just pick up where we left off. Indeed on more than one occasion when we hadn't seen each other for two or three months or longer Lawrence simply picked up the conversation from where we'd left it last time we spoke. I do feel terribly guilty though that I wasn't there for them this last couple of months, particularly as Rosie & Lawrence have always been there to help and support us during the last 20 years of both my and Diana's deteriorating health and all the associated troubles, I didn't know he was ill but that doesn't make me feel any better about it. It says a lot about them that they were Jake's favourite people (outside of us...or at least I hope he preferred us!), perhaps the ultimate seal of approval. On hearing the word Rosie he would gallop in high excitement between us and the front door wagging his tail so hard it looked like it might fly off and do someone an injury. On one memorable occasion when we had to leave him with someone while we spent the day in hospital, Rosie & Lawrence were busy too and so Jake was left with some other friends...he wasn't having any of it and promptly escaped. When I arrived to pick him up I found the family we'd left him with dispersed around the countryside in the dark trying desperately to find him, an hour or two later I got a phone call from Rosie, they'd arrived home, were walking up to their door when suddenly out of the darkness bounded a large wet, muddy, footsore and relieved dog, momentarily scaring the life out of them before displaying his joy at their return by distributing his mud all over them - he'd made his way two and a half miles or so between the two villages across field, ditch and busy road, a route he'd never travelled except by road in the back of my car, unerringly to where he wanted to be - not home please note! - Rosie & Lawrence's doorstep, where he faithfully waited.

At the funeral today it was standing room only as Lawrence's many friends packed the church out to the doors and there were several moving tributes to him from people who'd been his friends since childhood (keeping a friend for forty odd years speaks volumes about him) and those he befriended while pursuing his many enthusiasms; the cricket team he proudly played for for many years, likewise his golf club, archery society and from his work, they shared memories of him, of his youth as a Burt Reynolds look-a-like and early adulthood as a Che Guevara look-a-like to his more recent mature and less hirsute years. A detail that I think encapsulated many of his essential qualities was a small prop that one of his work colleagues brought along, a demonstration piece for school kids illustrating woodwork joints, being Lawrence he didn't just knock up something quick and simple but made a perfect little working medieval trebuchet incorporating pretty much every joint known to man executed to an exceptional level of accuracy....that was Lawrence, a perfectionist and a craftsman, it wasn't just something he did it was who he was.

At the village hall his motorbikes sat outside the door the subjects of today's picture and inside the wall was decorated with photographs from his life that served well as a focus for the crowd of friends and relations to reminisce. Kit and I paused longest at the photographs of him as he was when I first got to know him, 25 or 26 years ago, with his much loved dog Pan, a great bear of a Newfoundland, probably the biggest dog that's ever sat on me (and the object of hero worship on the part of my dog Dylan); and at the photographs from the time when his children were born (the same time as we were having Kit) and their shared toddler years - a rich source of memories.

I didn't take my camera with me, I wasn't comfortable with the idea of photographing people in mourning, but I wanted to represent the occasion in some way in today's picture, consequently I borrowed Diana's compact camera and quickly took this undistinguished picture of the riderless bikes. Diana was far more successful with her picture of the mourners at the graveside.

Today amply demonstrated the many lives his touched and the memories of him that will continue to live in so many minds. A staunch friend. A "do-er", someone who went out and lived life. If that doesn't amount to a good life I don't know what does.