Dave 'Dodgy' Jones (1954-2025)

 I heard the news yesterday that my great friend and social activist Dave Jones passed away recently. I can't say that I will miss him, as I have already had that experience while he has been shut away in a dementia care home in Teddington West London for close to 15 years. I visited on occassions when other reasons took me down South, but as is always the case, his memory of me or SWMBO diminished to nothing very quickly. One has no idea if the visits do register as certainly the exchanges indicate they do not, but I was advised to keep going as long as I was able, to keep the care home on their toes, and in case there was some cranial activity I was stimulating.

Dave was a long standing member of the Tuesday club, a group who convened at 9pm in The Prince Blucher in Twickenham, and pretended we had all been rugby training and needed a recovery pint or three. Clearly in our fourties, our rugby training days were long behind us, but the social couple of hours were always rich in stories and memories.

There were memories for SWMBO and I as well. We would often meet him in Paris when England were playing, although his allegiance was always to Wales!! We stayed in his apartment in Amsterdam and in Rome when his work with Cellnet took him away for months at a time, but most memorable, we were with him in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic Games as he was liaison officer for Helen Rollenson of TV fame, and we were working in the Georgia Dome. Dave sorted accomodation and had a good knowledge of  Buckhead and its bars and restaurants and we had a real blast for two weeks. 

The World was always a livelier place with 'Dodgy' around, and I felt priveliged to call him my friend. May you finally be free .

Lights are on, but nobody is home

I am told that giving a eulogy with a friend or loved one lying in the casket next to you, is a very hard thing to do. It is particularly tough when the person involved has been cut down in the prime of their life.

I experienced the closest thing to it at the weekend when I visited my mate Dave in Queen Mary's hospital in Roehampton. Dave, also known as 'Cellnet' Dave or Dodgy, has been diagnosed with early onset dementia and last year was sectioned. he remains in a secure unit at the hospital while they try to find a suitable care home for him. The implications are that he will remain institutionalised for the rest of his life, eight to ten years in a living casket if you will.

Dave was a bit of a lad as we spent our 30 and 40 somethings together alot of the time. A founder member of the Tuesday club, he was regularly  looking for a deal, or chasing a party. We played rugby together, and embraced the social side of the game,  all around the World. His times in Cannes at the telecommunications gala's and his reputation, unfair though it was,  as a short arms, deep pockets merchant were legendary and it was this latter trait which indicated to me that things were not all good in his world.

During my infrequent visits to London it became evident that people were bad mouthing Dave in a way that was not good. He was becoming nomadic and hermit like, and his behaviour in company was getting him into trouble. It is sad that only when his wife sought help to get him into a medical facility that could give him some help that the true nature of his change became evident.

When SWMBO and I visited him it was like walking into a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Initially  he would not see us,  but we stuck it out and some time later the nurse returned with him. He spent twenty minutes or so in the room with us, but it was obvious that he was really somewhere else. his recall of irrelevant facts was accurate, and his awareness of time and local events associated with it meant he left when the evening meal trolley was due. His wife has since indicated that he was aware who we were, which was a comfort.

I suspect he has days when the lights are off and nobody is home, or they are on and somebody is home. This weekend it was a combination of both. I hope I catch him in a better place next time.

2011 and all that

So we enter a new year, and the blog stats are telling me I must do better. I only posted 29 times during 2011 compared with a peak of 88 during 2007, a year which was only 8 months long in blog land. My posts have steadily declined year on year, so one New Year resolution is to post more blogs! I also plan to launch 'The Philanderer, the first four years' as a mobi file, but more of that later in the month.

2011 has been a year of ups and downs for us. Its memory will be dominated by the untimely death of SWMBO's brother Martin in Boston, USA. He was in his forties and having suffered a heart attack and he was unable to be resuscitated in time by the crash team. The family flew to Boston and waited by his bed for good news, but sadly none came.

Similar sad news surrounds my good friend Dave 'Cellnet' Jones who was sectioned earlier in the year and subsequently diagnosed with dementia. He is younger than me and one does wonder whether his extensive work with mobile phones was a contributing factor to his illness. His neighbour Graham Jones lost his wife Judy, after a long battle with cancer. So not a year to be keeping up with the Joneses.

There were good family events though. The wedding of Rebecca and Jon was great and it was foll0wed soon after by the engagement of Kieran and Hannah . The year was topped and tailed by the arrival of more baby girls. My cousin Mike has three girls, and his oldest now also has three girls, so quite how you get a boy to pop out is something I will have to ask my mate Dick about, as he has three of them!!!

Work on the house continued, not always as planned, and while the redesign of the bathrooms ran over estimate, it was the roof expense which was an unfortunate addition to the maintenance budget. Anyway, hopefully we are all done now for a while. The basement is the final area to be subject to a face lift and that can wait a bit longer.

We managed a few trips, most notably to Mauritius, but also to the Lake District twice and Ireland. Golf took me to Portugal twice, and we spent a few days in Christchurch, Dorset over New Year.

So what of 2012, the year of the Diamond Jubilee of QEII and the olympic games?

I have already indicated I will be blogging more (than 2011 at least), I will be taking SWMBO away more and be trying to get back into my running regime. That though will depend on my knees holding out.

I would love to get to a golf championship final, with Turnberry being one such target, however, I am still in the Daily Telegraph knock-out with my 4th round match on the horizon, and a couple more events to come up.

Other than that I will continue to work hard and play as hard as I can manage these days, so hope to have plenty to report on in the coming months.

A Happy New Year to all my readers