Epitaph for a friend.

For a few days my finger has been poised but I've hung off writing, but my grief yesterday prompts me to speak of a tragedy I knew would happen eventually yet was UN-ready to accept at all. The death of Dan Laythope was such a shock that I barely believe I could cry like that over someone not family and rarely seen enough as an erstwhile character, confident and friend. Yesterday I tried hard not to let this shadow to push me into drunken bewailing or fury. What a cruel hand fate is. I surely dreamt Dan died while in Holland but never registered it at all. It is only a dream and really dreams mean nothing; but Dan still laid dead for 3 weeks being reduced to an atomic state in a summer quite unlike another.

Every time I returned to NorthBar I made sure I asked after him or said hurried hellos while I whisked away from Leeds in my remunerate need. In the long past and change of seasons, years and a decade, at least, while NorthBar became another institution unlike the original institution and is a much more successful business leader, Dan, Dortmunder Dan, A Sunderlander, ex-teacher, ex-clerk of court, ex-dwp mail-man  ex-father and ex-voice of reason in a damnable world vanishes, and what can we all do but thank him for merging his energetic state keeping our complacency out of relations in NorthBar, etc.

The last time I saw Dan he was literally collapsed on the toilet floor, speechlessly drunk and I wondered if he was reeling from another of his lonely griefs and misfortunes. What ever the cause of his death this man dealt with me and others truthfully, honestly and embraced passionately the cities and towns he was fond to visit; whether Barcelona, Berlin, Sofia, Paris or Prague. We were all stung by his hyperbolic witty prose, but also accepted his naturally spiky, torn, emaciated, bony, clasping fury from time to time.

God! Dan will never be sat at on a bench at the bar moaning at the speed in which the bar stools are removed in the early evening or how soon the lights are dimmed to gas light flickers or how much Skin-flint/Glue-pockets put up their prices. He will never be there to prove positive not all people propping up the bar are mindless wankers'; life will go on, but there will always be a space in our hearts for an urban legend.