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My friend Chris passed away before Christmas after a long illness.  A week before his 44th birthday.

I had a birthday card I never got to send.  And that made me sad.  But I realised even though I had only known him just over 10 years I had a lot of fun memories of him.

He was a senior colleague when I started out in Export Sales for a publishing company.  He was fluent in French, German and (most impressively) Russian – so he was a great asset to our Export department.  Jealous, as I had always wanted to learn Russian, I marvelled at listening to him on the ‘phone talking to customers and was always amused when suddenly a word like ‘spreadsheet’ or ‘dumpbin’ would crop up in the conversation.

I took over some of Chris’ old German and Austrian customers when he was promoted to cover the Middle East.  Although the customers warmed to me conversations always went back to Chris and what he was up to and how he was doing.  Chris was always a great font of knowledge whilst I was on these trips if I could not understand the local lingo.  I remember texting him late at night after seeing an intriguing pop song on German MTV with a very long song title.  I was quite disappointed when it was translated to ‘Night with bandage’ or something.

One of Chris’ many endearing (ok do I mean infuriating) habits was his knack of leaving things to the last minute and then having the whole department rallying round to help.  We all did because he was that sort of person you wanted to help, and you knew he’d do the same for you.  For example, he once left getting his Russian visa right to the last moment and then had the whole department ringing the embassy all at the same time and waiting on hold until the first person got through.  He got them a bottle of champagne.  He always bought beers back for us and once an impressive bottle of Russian vodka for me, in a beautiful Matrioshka doll bottle.  He also never forgot I liked giraffes and these featured on various cards and nick-nacks over the years.

Chris was a huge Bowie fan and had been to see him many times.  There are many Bowie songs I listened to last year and made me think of Chris but one of the more apt ones was ‘Under Pressure’, which became the theme tune to our pre-Frankfurt bookfair preparation.  As the printers broke, tempers frayed, we all ate too many Haribo: Chris would run around the offer singing the chorus over and over again.

It was perhaps his love of Bowie and glam rock which lead him to dress up one Xmas party in some tight silver lurex trousers and ridiculous gold platform boots.  The boots were on display everytime we visited him last year in the hospice.  He also took down the office pin up of Nick Knowles one day and replaced it with a photo of him in the glam rock outfit instead.

I remember other daft things too.  One lunchtime after visiting either a pub, McDs or the chippie (he loved a spam fritter) we sat in his car outside work while he played my friend Cara and I our first hearing of Derek & Clive.

Yes, he went far too young and no doubt there were so many things he wanted to go and places he wanted to see; but he also packed a lot into his life.  On a recent trip to the hospice we sat and watched a montage of photos of some of his travels to far flung places.  Many off the beaten track places in his beloved Eastern Europe (the places the guidebooks probably don’t tell you about, for good reason) but also his more recent trips to Asia. And so tomorrow with a heavy heart we’ll all formally say goodbye to one of the good guys. It will be a sad day, of course, but I am also looking forward to hearing more anecdotes and stories about him as I feel I’ve barely scratched the surface here.

Покойся с миром товарища.