He was my best mate at university. We were as inseparable as Heinz and the Bean, three glorious years of laughing, boozing, wenching, philosophising and generally trying to make sense of life. We met several times after we went down, mostly in Paris, where he was working on Realites magazine. The last time I saw him was when he had proposed to a lovely American girl and was off to Dallas. We lost touch after that, sad to say. An extraordinary coincidence was that we were
exactly the same age, both born on 5 June 1936.
Today through the post I got the latest issue of the college Alumni magazine. As usual, I checked the obituaries. I almost wish I hadn't. My good mate has gone to his rest, I never thought he would go before me, he being so athletic and fit.
When my first child was born, I named him Jeremy John; you can't pay a friend a higher compliment than that.
3 comments:
Hello Jake. A moving farewell to Jeremy. What a sad demise. I didn't know him well, though I did know his mother-in-law and sister-in-law in Paris. I too worked at Réalités a decade later. It never occurred to me there might have been a Saint John's connection.
I was searching for the English translation of a book by Jacques Attali and discovered Jeremy had translated some of the most interesting French books to have been published in recent decades.
Rupert Swyer (Saint John's 65-68)
Hello Jake. A moving farewell to Jeremy. What a sad demise. I didn't know him well, though I did know his mother-in-law and sister-in-law in Paris. I too worked at Réalités a decade later. It never occurred to me there might have been a Saint John's connection.
I was searching for the English translation of a book by Jacques Attali and discovered Jeremy had translated some of the most interesting French books to have been published in recent decades.
Rupert Swyer (Saint John's 65-68)
Every death diminishes us a little, they say, and I have reached the stage where there's more diminishing than ever occurring. Every time I hear or read of a friend's or colleague's death, I wonder if I should be glad that I am still here as well as sad that they are not. I am not looking forward to the day when I open the Obituary column and find my own name there......
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