Immortality

2024  has been a bit of a wake up call already. When your hero's or peers start to curl up their toe's it brings home to you the fragility of life. I remember Franz Beckenbauer strutting his stuff in the great German football team of the late '60s and early '70s as he brought a new dimension to defensive football in the same way that Johan Cruyff was later to do with Holland's brand of total football. His death announcement was soon to be followed by that of JPR Williams, one of the hero's of the Welsh rugby era which spanned the 1970s and into the '80s. He was only a few years older than me and I could easily have played against him had I been a slightly fitter rugby specimen.

I have always said old age comes with unwanted gifts, and we cannot be too complacent as we just don't know what is around the corner for us.

It was re-enforced yesterday when I received a call out of the blue from Ian Ruddick, the brother of Steve. Steve had sadly died at his flat in Thailand a few months ago, and Ian was clearing the possessions from his brothers house in Croydon where he found a letter unopened which I had written to Steve in 2019.

We had lost contact with each other around 2010 and little did I know that he had upped sticks and moved to Thailand after various trauma's in his life in the UK. Steve and I were thrown together in 1971 when I moved from Plymouth to college in London and he did the same from Newcastle. We shared a bedsit in Stoke Newington, North London and then a flat in Northcote Road in Clapham before girls got in the way and we moved into our own places. We regularly met up and exchanged stories until the phone calls and and face to face meetings stopped, and only recently when the Antique Roadshow came from Clissold Park, just across from said bedsit, did I mention to SWMBO that if anything did happen to him  hopefully Ian would be in touch. Little did I know that events had overtaken that conversation and a close friend had already been taken from us.

So 'live for today' becomes even more relevant as our life's breath decreases by the moment. So book that holiday, buy that gift and tell people how much they mean to you before it is too little too late. 

Cheers Steve, and Haway the Lads!