HUGH AND I...

The afternoon Moon.  Photo by Kid Robson

Hugh was a nice big fella - tall, thin, quiet and unassuming.  I'd met him back in 1983 when I was attending night-classes at my old secondary school (now demolished), and he was one of those people with whom it was immediately easy to get along.  I'd left school at 16 before sitting any Highers, and now I was seeking to redress the oversight by studying for Higher English.  (Passed it.)

However, it wasn't until after we'd sat our exams and night-school was over that Hugh and I became friends rather than just mere acquaintances.  Not the sort of friends who palled about regularly, or who made arrangements to meet up or anything like that.  It was just a case of whenever we ran into one another, we'd pass the time by 'shooting the breeze' and perhaps having a coffee together.  Sometimes he preferred a pint, so we'd find a bar and I would partake of a Coke (in a dirty glass - nothing soft about me), and we'd kill an hour or two in conversation.

The last time I saw Hugh, I treated him to a meal in a local eatery (update: also now demolished) and we reminisced about 'old times'.  We'd only known each other for about seven years or so, so our shared recollections didn't reach back too far, but Hugh was a bookworm and always had something interesting to say.  He was also a book rep, which meant he had a car, so when we'd finished our meal and had a gab, he deposited me at my house and said goodbye. "We'll do this again sometime," he said.  "My treat."

A couple of months later (or so it seemed), I was reading the 'In Memoriam' column in my local paper and spied a familiar name.  It was the first 'anniversary' of the death of someone's beloved son, and I was surprised to see that the name of the deceased was the same as Hugh's.  Couldn't be him of course, as I'd last seen him only a couple of months back and the poor guy in the paper had been dead for a year.

However, as the day wore on, something gnawed at the back of my mind, and eventually I 'phoned a Glasgow shop which Hugh used to supply with books from time to time.  A guy called Stevie answered and I asked if he knew the book rep named Hugh, and whether he'd seen him recently.  "He's dead," he said.  "Got hit by a bus around a year ago."  Thanking him, I put down the 'phone and slowly let the confirmation of my nagging suspicion sink in.

That meant I'd last seen Hugh over a year before, despite it seeming far more recent than that.  I could hardly believe it - he'd been resting in his grave (or his urn) for over twelve months while I, in my ignorance, still trotted about permissively, half-expecting to run into him at any time.  Even after I learned of his death, I'd occasionally see someone in my local shopping centre and absent-mindedly think "Is that Hugh?", ready to call out to him before sadly remembering that he was no longer around.

Funny how quickly time passes, isn't it?  It's now over thirty-three years since I learned Hugh had died, and it still only seems like a few months since we ate and talked and laughed together, and he dropped me off outside my house with the promise of "doing it again sometime".  Sadly, for Hugh, that "sometime" never came - nor, in fact, for me either.  But who knows?  Maybe one day, perhaps - in another place, another time.

And Hugh - if so, you're buying.

(Originally published Sunday 12th August 2012.)

The same photo, digitally transformed into night-time