Funeral for a Friend.
We're going to a funeral this afternoon. It's for Eric who many years ago was my graphics teacher on my degree at Staffordshire University. He was a brilliant teacher and a wonderful person, we hit it off straight away. He had been an award winning photo-journalist in the 60s and 70s as well as a very clever illustrator. I'm not sure when he started to teach. But he was also an ex-RAF pilot, a Harlequin's rugby player and a jazz musician. He greatly influenced my love of jazz and pretty much introduced my single handedly to many musicians and bands, his son was a musician too, and when I was at uni, he was at school but played gigs at the student union with another great musician who became my clarinet teacher and a friend too. The four of us plus any others who wanted would go to local gigs at pubs etc in the Staffordshire area and had a great time! He also taught me to draw using the method of concentrating on the negative spaces and it really worked, I always had great problems drawing and this really cracked it for me.
After I left Stoke, we stayed in touch, by now with his wife as well, we went to the theatre a lot in Manchester and for a while their daughter lived near to us so we saw lots of them when they visited. Peter even did some design work for her hospital summer ball one year.
I last saw Eric at the Staffs Uni degree show on June 8th (we'd driven back from my Grandmother's funeral in Cheltenham, so it had been a rather intense day and it was wonderful to see him as we hadn't planned to go at all). He seemed in good spirits and we had a good catch up. Then we had a call from his wife last Saturday to say that he had died on the Wednesday. She had got home from a trip abroad and found him looking terrible, took him to the doctor and he was dead two weeks later. Apparently he had a tumour on his oesophagus which was un-operable. So it was a terrible shock to everyone. Peter has designed a beautiful order of service using photos we gathered when we visited the house last Sunday, I took some extra photos of the painting he was working on, his Harlequins shirt and his harmonicas. It's a very nice piece of work which I'm sure will be appreciated by everyone.
After I left Stoke, we stayed in touch, by now with his wife as well, we went to the theatre a lot in Manchester and for a while their daughter lived near to us so we saw lots of them when they visited. Peter even did some design work for her hospital summer ball one year.
I last saw Eric at the Staffs Uni degree show on June 8th (we'd driven back from my Grandmother's funeral in Cheltenham, so it had been a rather intense day and it was wonderful to see him as we hadn't planned to go at all). He seemed in good spirits and we had a good catch up. Then we had a call from his wife last Saturday to say that he had died on the Wednesday. She had got home from a trip abroad and found him looking terrible, took him to the doctor and he was dead two weeks later. Apparently he had a tumour on his oesophagus which was un-operable. So it was a terrible shock to everyone. Peter has designed a beautiful order of service using photos we gathered when we visited the house last Sunday, I took some extra photos of the painting he was working on, his Harlequins shirt and his harmonicas. It's a very nice piece of work which I'm sure will be appreciated by everyone.