Death of a Poet: RIP 'PNMJ'

By happenstance - a moment's thought to check the Internet to confirm a recollection - I learned this evening of the death of an old school peer, who died two years ago of pancreatic failure.

I won't say 'school friend' as we were not close, but we passed sufficient years in proximity for me to mourn his passing away and, perhaps more pertinently, to feel so much the more mortal oneself tonight discovering that someone of one's own years has died before his time.

He was at school known for his deeply, deeply appalling poetry. Long and turgid - page upon page of sombre, convoluted text riddled with impenetrable ideas and imagery - the reading of it was a shared task among us all, as no one person could stand to be exposed to much for any length without losing grip on reality or the will to live. He was a 'ginger' too which never helps in an all male establishment (for such was our school). [It has just struck me in Editorial mode that some may think I am referring to a particular sexual orientation when I say he was a 'ginger.' As best I can recall that for him was not an aspect of either his being or his behaviour. I mean rather that he was literally and brightly ginger-haired and bore all the other common features of one such: freckles, podgy pale skin and a propensity to sun-burn the moment the clouds parted. These are not traits one would wish to queue up for if planning on attending a boarding school of that era believe me.]

Later he achieved a certain fame - or notoriety perhaps - in being proclaimed, in a much and duly lauded comedy, 'the worst poet in the universe.' To those of us in the know the title was deserved, if a tad harsh to be so publicly named and shamed as it were. He took it, we hear, in good spirit objecting only to the publication of his address; fearing perhaps that legions of the comedy's fans might beat a path to his door for the masochistic pleasure of hearing the worst poetry in the universe recited by the scribe himself.

The writer of this fine comedy himself died some five or so years ago. This too was a shock and a sadness. I hope the two of them are reconciled in heaven. I'm sure they will be.