PLANET BIRTHDAY
I met
Scott within the first few minutes of my arrival on the first day of the first
term at Cambridge. I think we both felt relieved to meet each other as we
had gone there with ideas about what a “typical” Cambridge person was like and
were worried that we wouldn’t fit in. We had a lot in common - we were
both studying law, both from nondescript comprehensive schools from uncool
parts of the country (Loughborough in my case, Lincoln in his), both played
guitar, both traveled on our year out before University and, what seemed like a
crazy and amazing coincidence at the time, we both shared the same birthday -
March 8. We quickly became close friends.
Our
birthday always fell during term time and I think it was Scott’s idea to call
it “Planet Birthday” as in “we’re off to Planet Birthday!”. Planet
Birthday was different every year and involved various other friends depending
on their lecture schedules and other commitments but the one common theme was
Scott and I trying to amuse ourselves to the utmost for a day. The
amusement could take lots of different forms, but was usually fairly low key
given our budgetary constraints. For example it might involve a greasy
breakfast to start the day, followed by skipping a lecture to play some Adams
Family pinball and maybe a lunchtime pint in the college bar or a game of Sonic
the Hedgehog on Gav’s Sega. Later in the day it would usually devolve
into a pub crawl possibly taking in a college “bop” or a chip butty at
Gardenias. All fairly typical student stuff but that particular day was
always special and I now realise was made even more special because those were
the years when we were all forging the closest friendships of our lives.
At some
point in the evening of Planet Birthday, Scott would usually perform his
time-honoured trick of deciding he’d had enough to drink, going a little bit
pale, and disappearing off to bed, often without even announcing his departure.
This usually exposed him to a great deal of derision for the next few
days and, I must admit it was often a disappointment to have my partner-in-crime
for the day unceremoniously scarper and leave me coldly exposed as “the
drunkest person in the room”.
Looking
back, these “paleys” as we called such departures, were part of Scott’s
fundamental character. There were things he wanted to do, he was
perfectly happy in his own company and he wasn’t too bothered about peer
pressure or what other people thought. Not to say he was in any way
selfish, it was just that he always happily followed his own path in life and
didn’t see any reason to diverge from it.
One of
his catchphrases at the time (he was always a big one for catchphrases) was “like
life, expect derision”. Scott often brought out this catchphrase
to explain various “Random Robinson” happenings and, after we left college and
were working in London, the same catchphrase was also used as a shorthand
explanation for why he was planning on quitting his lucrative legal career to
work in IT. Later he shortened the catchphrase to just “I like life”,
muttered for comedy effect with glasses askew and through gritted teeth, in
mock anger.
Planet
Birthday changed after we left college. We had a bit more money so were
able to organize more ambitious entertainments (I think we did an evening at
Ronnie Scotts one year) but we were also following different paths so it was
not always possible to meet up. Later still after I moved to Canada and
our communication became largely electronic, Planet Birthday consisted of an
email message: “Happy Planet Birthday”. But even as recently as our
40th birthdays less than two years ago we were still planning more
Planet Birthday adventures. A combined snowboarding trip was the latest
idea but we deferred it to another year in the end because there was no urgency
to it. Who knew that we had such little time left?
It is
always very easy to see logic in somebody’s life decisions in hindsight, but
the logic is definitely there with Scott. Knowing now that he only had 41
Planet Birthdays to enjoy, many of his decisions make a huge amount of sense.
He didn’t waste time with a career that he didn’t enjoy, he followed his
own path which led to him to great happiness when he met Hayley, they got
married and had their two wonderful children. Reading the blog he kept in
the last few months of his life, it is very clear that (cancer aside) he was
very happy with his lot. He had a great deal of contentment. He “liked
life”.
As I am
sure is the case with many of us, I can’t help looking at the parallels between
Scott and myself and wondering how many Planet Birthdays I have left.
Scott’s situation has certainly made me re-evaluate my priorities and,
like Scott, spend more time enjoying life. One thing I can guarantee though is
that now that Scott has gone, Planet Birthday will never be the same.
My
thoughts now are with Hayley, Sam and Maisie - your loss is immeasurable and we
send you all of our love and wish you the greatest strength.
Scott, I
will really miss you mate but I promise you that on March 8 in every year I
will think about how grateful I am that I had the honour of knowing you for the
too-short time you had on this planet (the non-birthday one) and will raise a
glass to you, dear friend, and wish you a very Happy Planet Birthday.
