Persistence of Memory

Well, then...

Here we are.

First day of spring. First day of the rest of your life. First day of the fifth year of my life "After".

Loathe as I am to mark seemingly random waypoints in life - I always feel moved to acknowlege this one. One friend tells me it's because some events are simply strongly imprinted on our memories and, sadly, these events are typically not the nice times.

With that in mind I've been running over a list of the things that stay with me although he's now long gone. Overwhelmingly, these are good things.

These things shape who I am now and so even my friends who never met him actually experience a tiny part of the person who was the centre of my "before".

So - indulge me for a second - and when you see these things in me, you'll have an idea where they came from.

1. Philip Glass.
Repetitive, intense, distinctive music from one of the most prolific modern "classical" composers of the minimalist school.
You will have heard some Philip Glass music over the last month, of that I'm sure. He's been used in BBC documentaries, adverts, films and dramas.
I never really liked most of what he did - but we did agree on one set of music he composed. Amazon River.
Haunting, technically stunning and makes you listen on several levels.
You can count beats in the bar in many ways - 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12 and the way you experience the beats changes what you hear.
Give it try...

2. Beer
I moved from being a cider drinker to a beer drinker and was tutored by him.
First beer he ever gave me was Theakstons Old Peculiar.
His taste moved from dark to light beers whilst mine persisted around the mid-brown.
That was until the local pub started selling beer in four-pint jugs and he usually did the beer buying. Once converted to Bath Ales Spa, I've never really looked back from the hops.

3. Richard Feynman
Physics was never my thing at school. I didn't find the subject engaging and so mostly dismissed it out of hand once I didn't have to take an interest any more.
He handed my a copy of one of Feynman's books when I was bored one day and it brought me into the world of a man who not only loved the subject but wanted to make you love it too.

4. Curry
He took me for my first curry when he moved to Bristol. Ummm I had melon as my starter because the other things scared me.
Chicken tikka was a total revelation.
This weekend, after being inspired by another of my favourite people, I manufactured a curry from scratch, and made onion bhajis to feed houseguests.

5. Digital SLR cameras
He bought me mine after I repeated tried to use the one I'd bought him, and had fallen in love with.
That camera (Nikon D50) continues to live a useful life in the hands of my brother.
His camera (Nikon D70s) continues to live here with me - sometimes being pressed into service.
Photography kept me sane for a period of time I thought I would lose it completely.
Some of my favourite people - my lovely business partner TD, my fab Flickr friends DrP, DM, DrC, AB, MS, and all the others came into my life as a direct result of that camera.

6. Proper Coffee
My first trip to stay in Leeds was marked in my mind by a visit to a cafe (way before mass-market chain cafes were over-priced and over here). Cafe long gone now, sadly, and I can't remember precisely where it was.
In it you were served coffee in a cafetiere and it felt like the height of sophistication and extravagance.
His ever increasing quest for the perfect cup of coffee culminated in the purchase of a coffee roaster.
The legacy lives on because I now roast the coffee and grind the coffee and make the coffee with an espresso machine that needs 10 minutes warming-up time.
There is no instant fix of coffee in my place...

7 Home Cinema
Partly my fault, I'll admit. I brough home an LCD project from work to "mind" over a weekend's office move.
It was a calculated guess that the boy would have a little bit of fun with it over that weekend.
Six months later saw his 40th birthday and this was marked by the purchase of a projector, screen, new DVD player etc, etc

8 Space, the final front-ear
Both of us avid Star Trek watchers as kids...we experienced ST:TNG as a "couple" and have watched every episode countless times.

The start was always the same, though...As Kirk or Picard seriously intoned "Space, the final frontier" he mimed an ear in the middle of his forehead with his hand.

When alone and catching a sneaky episode on some junky cable channel - I still do it.

9 Klaatu barada nikto
From "The Day the Earth Stood Still" best of the 1950's B-movie sci-fi films. Nuff said.

10 Resistor colour codes
I can't even remember which colours they are, or how the knowledge of them turns into knowing what the rating of the resistor is.
But the mnenmonic persists...
Big Blondes Rip Off Your Garments Behind Vivid Grey Wagons.
He won 10p in physics class for that, I'll have you know.

I miss him dreadfully, of course, but there's nothing I can do about that.

And as I make tea in a teapot, listen to the Ting Tings, the Fall, or Maximum the Hormone, or read my books on the history of football tactics, or church architecture whilst remembering that Edward II was killed with a poker up his arse, or take pictures with my M8 and edit web-pages with a text editor I realise that the influences from people I like, love and admire continue.

Good innit?

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