I received an
e.mail this morning with the news of my friend Colin Doyle’s death. That hurt quite
a bit. We were very close for a while and kept in touch sporadically over
the years. His last e.mail to me was a typically Colin account of life as
a mad dash, full of commitments (to his children) and plans, hopes, ideas going
off in all directions. His writing seemed as full of the energy and the
rather boyish enthusiasm he had in person. He often played a bit of a
wide boy, the Arthur Daley of NUS at times but he was always bright and
intelligent and creative in his field; always committed to making things
materially better for those he saw as his constituency – students when he was
with NUS Marketing, pensioners when, later, he ran
Galleon Coaches (I think that’s what it was called … Ellenor always referred to
them as Col’s buses, which was how we came to think of them). I recall
being taken on a tour of Colin’s favourite bits of London – me and Jeane – when we first settled in
the big smoke after I moved to NUS. He toured us round the City and the
east end (Aldgate and Mile End Road), past his beloved Highbury. The river
was never far away; The Thames not simply as a river but for him, I think, an
artery along which beat the pulse of a great place of infinite possibility that
he loved dearly. The river was present in every sense. At one point
he took us to an old Jewish restaurant to pick up huge salt beef sandwiches to
take away; bright pink, steaming-hot meat with pickled gherkins and fiercely
hot mustard between enormous wedges of soft white bread with crisp, golden
crusts. It was in Bow or Poplar or somewhere in that direction. We
crossed the road to lean on an embankment wall, the Thames behind us and the
Jewish community before us going about its business as it had done for decades,
perhaps centuries in that part of London. He loved it, loved life, loved
showing it to us, laughed a lot and always shared his enthusiasms with anyone
who was willing. I miss my friend already.
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