In the post

Some things were lost

It was for love I lived
and for love I died,
a battle more thunderous
than the final nova.

Some things were lost.
Much more was gained.
All that lay quiet in the
coffin was transfigured.

And though the body is numb
and scorned with disease,
and the sense of touch has
crumbled to dust,

love knows no death or speaks
no pain nor rattles
with the bones of an empty grave
but is freed in eternity.

(Carl Cook: setting by Robert Hugill performed by FifteenB, St Peter's Eaton Place, London 23/2/2008.)

Hayward Gallery

Morning mist

Taken on a misty morning last week.

In memoriam 6 February 1958

So long, Miles

I was browsing through the newspaper on the bus to work last Thursday morning, not fully awake, when I was brought up short by the news of the death, too young, of the humorist Miles Kington. From the days when I used to read his columns in my father's copy of Punch he has been one of my favourite writers. His columns in the Times and then, for the last twenty-odd years in the Independent, have consistently brightened my days. I wouldn't have believed it was possible to write such a consistently funny column, day in, day out, for such a long time, and to hit the mark so often, up to the day of his death.

I owe much to Miles, not least through his invariably sound recommendations to investigate writers previously unknown. I remember my delight at acquiring his book of translations of Alphonse Alais more vividly than my doctoral viva the same day.

As a schoolboy I loved Punch, now long defunct. But in the last year have died the three contributors who I most enjoyed: Alan Coren, Handelsman and now Miles Kington. Whereas I hadn't seen the new work of the first two for years, my choice of newspaper meant that I have been reading Miles almost every day since my teenage years. Like so many others', my life will be poorer now.