Switched BBC News on tonight just in time for Look North and was surprised to see the Yorkshire rather than the North East version come on. It turns out North East comrades are on strike in protest of compulsory redundancies at the BBC unlike the scabs from Yorkshire. There may be another reason but I'm going to show solidarity with those taking industrial action by not watching the BBC news or logging on to the wonderful BBC web-site for the evening.
And that's as whimsical as I'm going to get tonight. Received more terrible news today at work today. Another associate/work friend was taken from us at the week-end. Chris Hoggarth, 4o years old died of a heart attack. What can I say, that 's 3 in under 2 years (see earlier obituaries at Goffa's Place). Uncannily they were all really close friends of each other.
Chris and I were quite good pals at one time as well, sharing a love for music and more precisely we were fellow consumers of music. He was one of only 2 people I knew who bought more CD's than I do/did. In his time Chris was an expert wheeler/dealer on eBay and latterly a record fair dealer. An early unconfirmed story is that he was doing a record fair the day he died at Whitby.
The last conversation I had with him was a few weeks ago about the valuation of my local punk singles (see earlier post).
I remember him treating me to a Stiff Little Fingers concert at Middlesbrough Town Hall a few years ago as part of a deal in which I gave him a CD back that he'd agreed to sell to somebody else. He didn't have to bother but he insisted. He was a dangerous party animal when an opportunity arose, and I've ended up in a few states over the years because of him. The lesser said on that the better. We've all got memories of Hoggy, some great, some bad ,some atrocious to be honest but never average.
Chris leaves his wife Debbie, who also works in our office and a 3 year old daughter.
Thought I'd put a song on for him. We share a love of Neil Young and Steve Earle and we both obviously liked SLF but I decided this was more appropriate. Cheers big fellar, this one's for you.
Terrible story about your mate, Geoff. Even for Middlesbrough - and heart disease is rife here - 40 is tragically young.
ReplyDeletePS. Just goimg through old posts and want to correct an inaccuracy. After a few days his cause of death was confirmed and it wasn't a hear attack but pneumonia. My apologies. This obviously does not help poor Debbie, his daughter Megan or Chis' family but I am still sorry.
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