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There’ll be some bile, grumpiness and a rude picture along in a moment, but if you’ll just forgive me there’s something I have to do first.

With a total lack of consideration, my dear friend John died some time in the early hours of my birthday, last Friday.  Another typical piece of attention-seeking.

He was my age, 47, and I had known him all my life: he was six months older than me and when I was snivelling with colic, my mother asked John’s mother for advice. John said the advice must have been no good because I just carried right on snivelling…..

From then until Friday, John was one of the few constants in my life, and I in his. With friends, you go through more, more closely, than you do with family: there tend not to be the politics. “Don’t mention such-and-such to her; she doesn’t speak to him”. We travelled many years and many thousands of miles together, and I feel bereft. And guilty.

John had epilepsy, an incurable disease of the brain which seemed to grow in severity all his life. To control it, he had to take drugs at which even Keith Richards would have baulked. However, not for an instant did he allow the condition to stop him doing what he wanted. He had such courage: imagine tackling all the obstacles life presents to you from teenage years – with their exquisite embarrassments – and on to adulthood, in the constant knowledge that at any moment you could suffer a seizure that, to the uninitiated, is unsettling at best, frightening at worst. That at any moment you could completely lose control of your body and hit the deck with a helpless, sickening thud. That at any moment you could be completely, defencelessly, reliant on the kindness of strangers. Imagine having that  knowledge with you in every breath you take, and reflect, then, that John travelled the wide world, with friends or on his own. At school his friends nicknamed him ‘Freaky’, something he embraced and owned with humour and pride.

He and I played table tennis on a Swiss Alp, battled at snooker in Ireland, argued fiercely about Jimmy Connors and Lester Piggott while confronting Mr Goulash in his underpants in Budapest. When he fell with an attack and people recoiled in horror, I’d make sure he was safe and then say to onlookers “He’s got epilepsy” in the manner that Sybil Fawlty said of Manuel: “He’s from Barcelona.”

Carrying spare drugs for him through customs (there were always such arrangements in case his got lost or stolen) once brought me within the thickness of a latex glove of intimate violation by a Belgian. I know it was one of the great regrets of John’s life that, speaking in vehement French over my shoulder, I managed to talk my way out of the proposed insertion, to howls of laughter from my friend.

John enjoyed passion, personal and political, in Cuba, adventure in Africa. He worked in Canada, travelled in Australia and Fiji with Yogi and Annie. He drank in the Journey’s End and the Royal Oak, the Church House with many brothers and sisters of this column, and the Pickwick (though he and I were banned from there, to our great pride. We were veterans of The Great Stag Night Hawaiian Shirt Greased Landlord Raid). We laughed at Cheers. (“How’s life treating you, Norm?” “Like it caught me sleeping with its wife”). When we were boys we played endless cricket matches in the fields of his parents’ farm, his collies, Ben and Brigand, God rest their beautiful doggy souls, fielding every ball for us. He helped us move. He bought us a hammock and then lay in it beneath the magnolia tree, smoking expensive Cuban cigars. He decorated our home with Kathy when we were expecting our first child…. He was Uncle John to my boys… Oh….

And in latter years I worried when he was planning to visit because he was such a safety hazard to himself and others, didn’t phone him enough, didn’t see him enough. Now, of course, I feel such a shit for that, much good may that do anybody.

There are few in life from whom I will accept a prayer. One is, of course, Captain Kay, who knew John well and has long been my spiritual guide in The Way of the Crab. We follow, you see, the Coconut-Eating Crab, the deity who symbolises and oversees man’s ceaseless pursuit of the unattainable, and the Captain, on hearing the sad news, offered this profound – I mean that –  reflection:

“The Coconut-Eating Crab. What a bastard.”

I will also listen to the good reverend Sister who offers this column occasional spiritual guidance, and she wisely and comfortingly wrote: “Wherever we think ‘he’ is now, we can certainly agree that his suffering is over and he is healed”. Amen.

But, as always, we return to the great and godlike Leonard Cohen, to whom John was as devoted as I. Our last trips together, young and fancy-free no more, were to see two gigs on the godlike one’s extraordinary comeback tour in his late 70s, 15 years after last performing. Shivering together in the rain on the forecourt of Edinburgh Castle in the summer of 2008, after I had to just about carry John to the show because he was going through one of his bad patches of side-effects from the savage drugs he had to take, we heard Cohen’s prayer:

If it be your will

That I speak no more

And my voice be still

As it was before

I will speak no more

I shall abide until

I am spoken for

If it be your will

…

And draw us near

And bind us tight

All your children here

In their rags of light

In our rags of light

All dressed to kill

And end this night

If it be your will.

No more prayers. John also adored Seinfeld (he knew everything about sport, music and comedy, apart from anything to do with Lester Piggott and Jimmy Connors, obviously), and Seinfeld said: “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

Enough. I just wanted to write my friend to his rest, because I loved him.

Here you are, Mr Cameron

If David Cameron and his GCHQ snoopers wish to snoop on me in their proposed change to the security laws, they are most welcome. I can signpost them to some excellent sites offering sound advice on the morals and economic sense they lack. In fact, and with grateful thanks to Sister Wizardwoman, they may like an image from a website I visited last week:

 

 They shall not pasty

As for the pasty tax… come on, brothers and sisters. Let the producers pass the decision to the customer – would we like to pay the VAT or break the law and not pay the VAT? If we break the law, the producers should break the law themselves by selling the untaxed pasty and then ask us for our name and address so they can dob us in to the police. Imagine the mass protest – imagine them having to prosecute tens of thousands of people who’ve taken the glorious chance to rebel… imagine. Thatcher was brought down by the poll tax. Wouldn’t it be great if Cameron was brought down – actually, in his case, brought more sideways than down – by the pasty?

And while we’re at it

The proposal to charge a full 20% VAT on repairing churches and listed buildings… the sheer petty-minded culturally ignorant stupidity of such disregard for our history is far from surprising, but certainly unpleasant. Let’s break that law too. Really: builders shouldn’t charge it, churches shouldn’t pay it. Break the law. Systematically, consistently, in the cause of right against petty wrong. That’s how change comes.