you'll take away the very heart of me....

I've known this fine figure of a man since we met at school in 1987 at the tender age of thirteen.  Since then, we've been to a few gigs together, lots of festivals together, discovered bands together, watched a lot of very fine quality sport together (and the England cricket team of the late 90s and early 2000s, who, it should be stressed, produced no sport of a very fine quality at all for about a decade and we seemed to watch almost all of it.  They never even really got close, bless them).

....and we've certainly talked a lot of old shit and drunk a lot of booze together.

He was actually the designated witness at our wedding (the equivalent of the best man in Austria).  He gamely managed to give a decent speech having been assured many, many times before the big day that there would be no speeches... only to be informed at short notice that he would, in fact, need to give a speech as the father of the bride and an old family friend of the bride would both be giving speeches and we apparently needed someone to weigh in from the groom's side.  No, that doesn't make any sense to me either, but that's how it happened.

Anyway.

He's been living in the Hague for the last couple of years, but as of a couple of weeks' time, he moves to Montreal.  That's a properly long way away.  Quite how our lives can continue without his organisational expertise is unclear, although his time in Holland has been a useful training period for us and we seem to have survived.  It was his leaving bash in Oxford over the weekend, and we sent the old boy and his wife off with our best wishes and a skinful of beer and wine.  Just for old time's sake, we also put something on the telly when we got back in from the pub and woke up about 3 hours later having all almost immediately fallen asleep on the sofa.

Good times.

He's an idiot, but he's our idiot and he's been a big part of my life for the last 27 years.  I'll miss him.

In a terrible blow to the Canadian postal service, he's even suggested that he might put aside his total disdain for Facebook in an attempt to keep in touch.  Well, you never know.

Bon voyage, you pillock.