Memories of Fred
Number 1 in an occasional series about friends and loved ones who are no longer with us.
My schoolfriend Fred Hood died on Christmas Eve last year, at the age of 28. Swept away by an avalanche while skiing in Austria, he was mercifully killed instantly. Being an international sort of chap, he had memorial services in Washington DC, Bologna, and Eton; I went to the Eton one, and then went back to his parents' house, where we held a wake for him in the marquee that had originally been hired for his brother's engagement party.
At the wake (and this is an idea I am totally stealing if I ever get asked to run one), they had a sort of open-mike eulogy: a microphone was passed around, and anyone who felt like it could stand up and share their memories of Fred. These were mine.
Back in 1997, we did a show called Blood and Honour at the Edinburgh Fringe, in which Fred played the leading man and I played a corpse. Fred was also in a rather better-received show called Who's Laughing Now?, in which he played a school bully. There's a story about Stanislavsky (from Bulgakov's Black Snow), in which Stanislavsky, unhappy with an actor's performance, calls for a bicycle and tells the actor "Now, love that woman on a bicycle!". In a similar spirit, I challenged Fred to sit down on a chair as his character. And he did. For a few seconds, as he thumped down, sprawled proprietorially, cast a hostile, privileged glance around the room, and shook open his newspaper, Fred wasn't inhabiting his body; instead, the space was occupied by an entirely different person, a million miles from the Fred we all knew. It remains one of the best pieces of acting I've ever seen.
Much was made at the service of Fred the actor, Fred the intellectual, Fred the scholar. Rather less was made of Fred the sportsman. And yet, we used to row together in Lower Boats, training six days a week and lifting weights for a couple of hours every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I remember one day, when we went for a training run around one of those Etonian sports pitches named after an ancient Near Eastern civilisation, that Fred and I agreed to pace each other, and not to compete with each other. And yet, when we reached the final straight, I sped up to a sprint and hit the finish line well before him.
I just want to say that I'm sorry, dude. That was a dick move.
My schoolfriend Fred Hood died on Christmas Eve last year, at the age of 28. Swept away by an avalanche while skiing in Austria, he was mercifully killed instantly. Being an international sort of chap, he had memorial services in Washington DC, Bologna, and Eton; I went to the Eton one, and then went back to his parents' house, where we held a wake for him in the marquee that had originally been hired for his brother's engagement party.
At the wake (and this is an idea I am totally stealing if I ever get asked to run one), they had a sort of open-mike eulogy: a microphone was passed around, and anyone who felt like it could stand up and share their memories of Fred. These were mine.
Back in 1997, we did a show called Blood and Honour at the Edinburgh Fringe, in which Fred played the leading man and I played a corpse. Fred was also in a rather better-received show called Who's Laughing Now?, in which he played a school bully. There's a story about Stanislavsky (from Bulgakov's Black Snow), in which Stanislavsky, unhappy with an actor's performance, calls for a bicycle and tells the actor "Now, love that woman on a bicycle!". In a similar spirit, I challenged Fred to sit down on a chair as his character. And he did. For a few seconds, as he thumped down, sprawled proprietorially, cast a hostile, privileged glance around the room, and shook open his newspaper, Fred wasn't inhabiting his body; instead, the space was occupied by an entirely different person, a million miles from the Fred we all knew. It remains one of the best pieces of acting I've ever seen.
Much was made at the service of Fred the actor, Fred the intellectual, Fred the scholar. Rather less was made of Fred the sportsman. And yet, we used to row together in Lower Boats, training six days a week and lifting weights for a couple of hours every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I remember one day, when we went for a training run around one of those Etonian sports pitches named after an ancient Near Eastern civilisation, that Fred and I agreed to pace each other, and not to compete with each other. And yet, when we reached the final straight, I sped up to a sprint and hit the finish line well before him.
I just want to say that I'm sorry, dude. That was a dick move.