Just over a year ago, my dear friend David Fleming, author of the seminal and wonderful Lean Logic, A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive it, died, very suddenly, on a weekend visit to Amsterdam. He left for Amsterdam the morning after joining us at our last year’s Tasters’ Christmas Party – but although I think he might have seen some merit in dying from a surfeit of lampreys, Malmsey and mince pies, I do not think that we can be held responsible.
However, we felt the need to mark his passing at this year’s party. Since David was a firm believer in the power of communal singing, preferably of hymns, to invigorate a gathering and to act as social cement I did not feel that merely raising a glass to his memory would really do. Our assembled company therefore seriously startled the neighbours with an extraordinarily vigorous, if somewhat tuneless, rendering of both verses of Jerusalem. I hope that we sang loudly enough for it to reach his cloud…
If you would like to know more about this original, brilliant, funny, erudite, infuriating and lovable man, see my blog of December 4th last year, the comments below and the many wonderful tributes on Shaun Chamberlain’s site.