This violates the axiom of transitivity

So it was going to be like this:

Not last Sunday, but the one before I was going to post on how I'd achieved an ambition of sorts, of how I'd played guitar in a band, with an audience. How after two rehearsals a disparate bunch of musicians (bass, guitar, drums, keys, 2 singers, melodian and me) played Green Onions, Brown Eyed Girl, Surfin' USA, Daytripper and Summer of '69 to an appreciative (and hopefully forgiving and forgetful) group of colleagues at The National Archive's band Night.

At best I hope we were like the band when first mentioned here. I still make no claims to be able to do anything other than bang out a few chords but it was an absolute fuckin' hoot, and if we ever get the video I'll post it up.

Then on Saturday with my arm halfway down my chimney, my Dad calls to tell me Mum's been rushed into hospital for an emergency operation and that she's going to be in intensive care and that no-one quite knows exactly how serious it is. She's home now, almost a week, and watching her recover so quickly has been a tonic in a week when tonics were going to be much required.

Because it wasn't going to be the first time that week I was going to be spending a day in an ICU. It's tough beyond belief seeing your Mum blurry on morphine, needles piercing her wrists and neck, tubes criss-crossing her, bruised and battered and in pain. Thankfully with each passing visit the tubes disappeared, the clarity returned and the pain receded. We'll still be having a very quiet Christmas.

Back in work on Tuesday I get a call to tell me one of my friends from the mooring has fallen whilst with his boat, which was out getting her hull scraped. On Tuesday night he was apparently woozy, but conscious and aware. We were waiting for the bandages to return and much jovial finger waving and laughing.

Ed's actually far more than just a friend form the mooring. I've known him since we were 9, explored Dungeons and battled Dragons together, got pissed on two continents together, I tried to sleep in an airport baggage cart at his wedding and he's responsible for two significant turning points in my life: first dragging me up to Tooting from Brighton, and second, dragging me out of Tooting and on to the mooring by convincing me to buy Chuffy when she came up for sale. He's also scraped me off the wall in dark days more times that I can remember.

Life delivered one of it's unforseen gut-punches when his wife rang me on Wednesday morning to tell me something had gone wrong over night and that the doctors didn't think he was going to make it. We waited all day, as machines pumped his heart for him, for the consultants to confirm that whatever it was that made Ed, Ed, it was never ever going to return. Ed as I knew him ceased to be that morning, and the rising and falling of his chest was merely an optical illusion of science rather than life.

He's gone. I walked beside his coffin into the crematorium yesterday morning. But it's hard to fathom that I'll never again see him ambling by. And it makes me so sad that he'll not see his son grow up, that his son will never know his father, and that his wife has lost her soulmate, his mother her son. I don't believe in any God whose judgement I can either question or find solace in (and quite frankly, if you can give me some omnipotent reason why Ed's gone and Dick Cheney's still allowed to walk this earth free from crippling daily torment then that's a God who needs a serious fucking kick in the teeth). Whatever forces govern this rock have no words for good or evil, beauty or ugliness, truth or lies, have no sense of judgement or morality. They merely dictate that with life comes death.

And no more.

What happened was a shitty, fucked-up, tragic accident. I wish it hadn't happened but it has. Those of us who cared about him will each find our own ways of coming to terms with what happened. That is what we do.

There seem to be so many people involved in the practicalities and beauraucracies of death: doctors, nurses, ministers, funeral directors, and all, throughout these past ten days, that I have met with have been exceptional human beings. Their sensitivity and understanding on a daily basis really marks them out amongst us.

And there are those who simply by association get dragged into the proceedings. I've always thought that when you're told someone's died and you have to give friends or family your condolences, that it sounds so empty, trite. But of course, you still have to. A friend expressed this same sentiment to me a few days ago whilst doing just that. Now on the receiving end, I've learned that the words really don't matter - quite simply there are no words to alleviate the kind of hell you're going through. But knowing that someone's thinking of you, and there for you (whether you'll ever need to take them up on it or not) means everything. I'll not worry next time I'm on the delivering side.

The love and support my friends have given me has been overwhelming, has bowled me over.

To say thank you would sound, well, trite.

Thank You.

So in the immortal words of Ringo Starr: please stop sending me all your shit.

Sorry, I mean: Peace and Love x

Ed 30/04/70 - 15/10/08