It must be 20 plus years since my friend – I will call him Alex - died. I avoided that euphemism ‘passed away’ because I have no reason to think he passed to anywhere else.
Alex was my soul mate I suppose. My best friend for many years. Thinking of him now, and in a way missing him after all these years.
I met him at a group meeting, and whilst I think we talked a bit, he didn’t make a strong impression on me. This was at the time I had left Liverpool to remake a life in London. I was 24, but really just coming out of my teens and trying to be an adult. I had a dreadful but fantastically cheap flat in Acton. I had found a job working as a Temporary Accountant. Work felt very free, with no ties or long contracts. I was a conscientious worker always but it was different being temporary with no real commitment.
I was still inexperienced in many ways and with a very low opinion of myself as a social being. Awkward, not confident with new people, feeling lonely despite a few close friends.
Alex had taken my number and he rang me one day. Would I like to join him in a party of young people who had a holiday booked in Greece. There would be a group of 20 odd and he wanted me to take one of the places that were available. Sounded interesting and a bit adventurous – coach from Victoria through Yugoslavia, then behind the Iron Curtain – to a camp site on the Greek mainland. So I said yes. It was quite cheap and an adventure for me.
So we travelled on that awful coach. Spent a night in an inn in Austria (Mödling – I always thought of Reginald Maudling) but the sordid coach journey and the scrubby camp site was a way of bonding. And Alex and I must have recognised fellow spirits and spent a lot of time drinking and exploring and talking together. We were both rather terrified of females, at least when we anticipated anything that gave a suspicion of the possibility of a sexual relationship.
In other ways I was more advanced than Alex: I had been living away from home since I was 17, apart from an 18 months interlude when I went back to my mother’s house. I had lived in shared flats and houses, and on my own. I had my own version of a diet and a lifestyle. Alex still lived with his parents and he was an only child of lovely but claustrophobic Jewish parents. I remember his suitcase with food in – Weetabix, and bananas and other provisions I forget, all wrapped individually by his mum in tin foil. We all mocked him for this, but Alex was a robust person and held to his eating plans. No embarrassment – it was what it was and we should and did accept it.
This short essay is about Alex, rather than that holiday, but our friendship was cemented and developed on that trip. Whilst I was not quite a virgin, I had never had a serious relationship and Alex if anything was more regressed than me. A number of us took the ferry to the local island, Skiathos and its near neighbour Skopelos. We were inexpertly trying to chase girls but were hopeless. Alex was slightly bolder than me, and progressed sufficiently to offer and be accepted to apply sun cream to a pair of naked Dutch girls. This was the 1970s and we sought out nudist beaches. Not really my thing, but my friends were all for it, Alex particularly so, almost like a religion for him. I suppose nude beaches were cool in the aftermath of the sexual revolution that had played out a few years earlier and in truth had mainly passed me by. We both fantasised about the Dutch girls but he was the only one to touch flesh, albeit chastely.
We ended up, after an unsuccessful night in the bars and discos, sitting on the quay in Skopelos overnight awaiting the morning ferry. We had become close. There was a girl on our trip called Jenny who we probably both fancied. Well, I know we did. Alex took the role of teaching her to swim, which involved him standing next to her in the sea supporting her with his arms. The excitement he experienced in touching her – also chastely - was obvious, and my jealous agonies were completely suppressed. 10 years later, Alex told me Jenny had told him how she fancied me. Oh Alex, how could you be so cruel? If he had told me at the time I probably have been tongue tied and mainly embarrassed, running a mile.
We went on other holidays. Once I drove him and 2 girls from his office in Barnet to watch England get beaten by Italy in the qualification for the 1978 World Cup in Rome. A great journey even if the football was disappointing. But so were the girls. We both sort of fancied the same one. Whether either of them fancied either of us is another matter entirely and will remain a mystery for eternity, because neither of us were up to make any move at all. They didn’t either, so perhaps that tells its own story.
Back in England, we met often to go to football. He was obsessed and we would go to the midweek matches in London. Rarely at the weekend because he was an Arsenal fan who had a season ticket at Tottenham. Does that sound odd? His cousin was a Tottenham fan (said to be standard for the Jewish community) and he went there because he liked to spend time with him. If Arsenal were at home on Saturday he went there. I sometimes went with him, especially if Liverpool were the opposition. Thinking back, being a Liverpool supporter on the North Bank in the 1970s was quite brave of me. I did not show excessive enthusiasm for the Reds, I suppose, and I never had any trouble there except being terrified going down the steps afterwards. So we were at The Valley, and Brisbane Road and Craven Cottage and Stamford Bridge and White Hart Lane, and most often at Loftus Road. QPR was my pet London team then
We were mates, enjoying man/boy stuff, but we also shared a lot of intimate conversations about life, love (usually unavailable), politics and of course football. Often we went on holiday together. He was an organiser by talent, and I found out that he had asked me on that first holiday because he had a deal where he would get a free ticket if he found 20 customers. But in an unobtrusive way he arranged get togethers in the UK – for example 20 of us at New Year – as well as abroad.
As I (and later Alex) found girlfriends, some who lasted, some who didn’t and that limited how much time we had together. We came up with a cunning plan, to play golf together. We nearly always played at a public course in Hanwell, which meant Alex (always organised) phoned them at 6am or whatever to get a slot on the tee. Usually this was at 9 or 10 and we always met first for breakfast in the club house. We hacked our way around 18 holes, usually assigning a ball or 3 to the depths of the River Brent. We were hopeless golfers and I think on only one occasion I got my score down to about 102 on a course where the card says 67. But our ineptitude, and the way the course worked, meant we were out there for 4 or 5 hours, so plenty of time for chat beyond looking for lost balls, augmented by a session for lunch and a beer back in the clubhouse.
One day after playing, I said I hate golf. Alex said he hated it too, and we acknowledged that we played golf because of the friendship. It was a convenient way of having regular, long meetings. So we cancelled the golf, something I never regretted. But the down side was we had less reason for meeting each other
I loved Alex. He was my best pal and my confessor. We could rely on the other to be there for each of us. Alex developed a problem with his digestion. He went to the doctor and after a lot of examinations he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. He had terrible symptoms – extreme pain, passing blood, awful trials of various nature. The specialists were clear – his condition was severe and the only viable remedy was a colostomy.
By this time he must have been early 30s and he couldn’t bear the possibility of having to carry a colostomy bag for the rest of his days. He had become a health food aficionado and decided he would deal with this problem by natural methods. Faddish diets, horrible drinks and food and something called Slippery Elm. He consulted Naturopaths and Homeopaths, Chinese medicine and herbal remedies.
Thus he avoided surgery. He had occasional crippling attacks but generally lived a normal life, working for the Probation Service and eventually getting married. He and his wife were trying for children but failed to conceive, even with IVF. They tried to adopt but didn’t meet the criteria (they were too old) but found a way to adopt a child from South America – I think Colombia but my memory might let me down. This was a joy to them, as was the boy. Later they started to adopt a sister for him.
But Alex had had a relapse. The not-drugs were not working and he found himself in the Royal Free Hospital. He was diagnosed with a very advanced abdominal cancer – inoperable and not really treatable. Alex was not daunted. He was quietly convinced it was treatable by complementary medicine. But it wasn’t getting better.
Some years earlier he had introduced me (and all our circle) to a game called nomination whist. We had played it in draughty cottages in Devon and modern houses on the Norfolk Broads and a converted barn in Northumbria. It was a game of skill but one of the right level that nobody was going to dominate the game. Bit like Alex and I at golf, I went to see him many evenings in the hospital. We talked a bit, but the centrepiece of the evening was nomination whist. We played it each time, usually a couple of times, but until the nurses pestered me to leave or, more often, Alex got too tired with the drugs and the mental and physical trauma he was suffering.
I had loved him for years but my love burgeoned as I saw him in hospital. So brave and, in truth, so deluded. I knew he was dying, and I suppose he did too, though he never admitted it. The nurses had fallen in love with him too. They made sure he was put into a private room which better accommodated his many visitors and made him feel better, at least mentally. The nurses were affected too and loved spending time with Alex. There was talk of moving him to a hospice but he fought mightily against it. Going there would run against his determination and faith that he would recover.
A few days later, I heard from his wife. He had been removed to a hospice. Angry and feeling betrayed. I suppose I had neglected him at the end. It was now too late.
I had lost some of the intimacy with him. We had both become married and fathers. He had linked up with a Jewish group in North London where he lived. We did a few things with this group but I felt alienated, not I think by the Jewishness which by definition meant I was an outsider. But more because I was against religious observance of any sort. Alex had gone that way, and it left me behind. We were still close friends but it had become a different relationship.
He was kind, funny, annoying, pedantic, very competitive and for a long difficult period in my life he was my soulmate and a fantastic friend. It is probably 25 or 30 years since we lost him, but I still think of him and I still sometimes miss him. Having Alex in my history is important to me. He will always be a part of me and I am eternally grateful to have known him.
Note: This is a completely true story, though there will probably be bits I misremembered. Alex was a real person and my other friends will recognise him, but I have used a pseudonym for him. RIP
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