John was born just three weeks after me in 1953 and I’m fairly sure that our first encounter was when we were both still in prams. We went to Alderley Edge Primary School from age 5. It is a small Victorian building close to St Philip’s church and a moderately short walk from the compact rural council estate where we lived. I always envied John’s house as it was right on the edge of the estate and had a particularly large garden because of its sweeping corner site. John’s dad, Walter, certainly kept the garden looking beautiful and John clearly inherited his green fingers from an early age. As we grew up, a certain envy of John’s garden encouraged me to work on ours as my own dad was rarely connected to a spade. Despite my efforts though, it was never a patch on John’s.

Our childhood is framed by precious memories. Playing in John’s garden was one. I would usually go up to his as the garden was spacious and his Dad had a fascinating shed full of useful bits and pieces. Indoors, we played a lot of board games, especially Monopoly, usually in John’s small dining room by the kitchen; sometimes with our friend, Ant Rigby, but often just the two of us. We used to try to finish a game as quickly as possible and if I remember correctly, John once bankrupted me in just 16 minutes. We thought of telling the Guinness Book of World Records but never did. The tactics were always the same – play at lightning speed and buy everything you land on – and we could complete multiple games in the same session. As teenagers we later discovered ‘Risk’, but this particular board game would take a good couple of days before world domination was achieved.

We went up The Edge, the steep, wooded sandstone escarpment overlooking the Cheshire plain that the village takes its name from, a great deal. One summer we went up it every single day throughout the school holidays, except on Sundays when I sang in the church choir. As it was closest, we would always walk up the steep side. We played at being young naturalists and took tools to dig out water channels to unblock boggy areas where accumulated leaves and mud met water running off the rocks to create an impassable mire. We were very proud of one of these channels in particular which we nicknamed ‘The Bruce’ after the US pop singer, Bruce Channel. While our Edge excursions took place throughout our childhood, I think Bruce’s hit “Keep On” places this particular summer in 1968. Embarrassingly, we would have been 15 then and this may have been the final year of such adventures, before the discovery of girls set in!

Over the years while up The Edge, we also explored caves and imagined we’d eventually find King Arthur’s sleeping knights; a local legend which involved a wizard buying a horse off a farmer and showing him a secret cave where the knights and their white steeds slept. As we were into weird stuff and The Edge held its other secrets such as the curious absence of birds, we would also look for signs of strange activity overnight; ashes from small fires or stone circle patterns. During the day we would scout for people wearing cloaks, though of course they may just have been fans of The Incredible String Band – a group I came to love, though John regarded their vocal talents as akin to those of strangled ferrets. These days Alderley Edge is better known as an affluent place frequented by premier league footballers – the Beckhams once lived here – and the Cheshire set. In our day it was a quiet village with some posh houses up the hill and a council estate populated by the salt of the earth.

John and I were big fans of pirate radio, especially Radio Caroline. We used to tune in and listen incessantly, and recall that we found the frequently irritating adverts very funny and could recite many by heart (a skill that, with the passage of time, has eluded me). Sadly, Caroline’s visionary owner, the wonderfully named Ronan O’Rahilly (easier to say than spell) died, aged 79, just a few days before John. I think our musical tastes began to diverge when I eventually got into Prog Rock bands like Yes and early Genesis; that, or perhaps he never forgave me for liking The Incredible String Band.

We both passed our 11 Plus and went on to Wilmslow Grammar School. Initially our paths stayed fairly true; we were in the same class and then graduated to the Language class the following year where we were able to take a second language. We then both became guinea pigs for the school’s first foray into teaching GCSE ‘O’ Level Russian.

By the following year, John had taken the science route while I plumped for arts subjects. John’s love of Chemistry grew while the science staff were collectively relieved that I was no longer anywhere near a Bunsen burner. John, though, also continued with Russian up to ‘O’ Level. In those days you were often scared witless by several members of staff, including the sadistic Music teacher who would pull your sideburns for falling to recite the major scale in the correct order. Our Russian teacher, Mr Baxendale, could be a scary monster with his big booming voice but ultimately, as we got to know him, he was a gentle giant. In the early days though he did not suffer us fools gladly and once rounded on John for using the word for window while pointing to his ear: “Eto okno” answered John hesitantly. “Nyet, nyet!! Eto ukho!!” came the exasperated response along with a sharp tug of John’s ear. I remember we all found this incident, not the first or last of its kind, really funny.

With ‘A’ Levels in Maths, Chemistry and Physics, John went on to Reading University to study Chemistry while I hung around for another term to try to get into Oxford but ended up the following autumn at Exeter University. By the time I graduated, John was two years ahead of me and starting his first teaching job in Carlisle. I had extended my stay at Exeter by becoming Treasurer of the Students Union for a sabbatical year. I moved back to Alderley but John was no longer around, other than when home for the odd weekend, and within a year I had relocated to London. With many miles between us and our own lives to lead, chances to meet face to face were few, although we would keep up dutifully via Christmas and birthday cards plus postcards in the days when you sent ‘Wish you were here’ messages from your summer hols to your best mates. 

I last saw John in August 2018 when my wife Gill, youngest daughter Rosalind and I had a short break up north including a few days in the Lakes. We met for lunch and a walk. In the afternoon we fulfilled Rosalind’s wish to step foot in Scotland with a lightning trip up the motorway to Gretna Green. John & Pat meanwhile went home and kindly prepared a lovely salad tea for us, allowing further time for chat and reminiscences. My last view of John is how I wish to remember him. John seemed to be managing Parkinson's really well. He looked so well in himself, fit, youthful too, and as sharp of wit as ever. The visit is still so vivid in my memory, I had to double check that it wasn’t actually last summer. His passing is a great sadness and a timely reminder that any opportunity for a reunion with close friends should always be grasped with both hands.

Despite the fact that our physical paths parted so many years ago I have always felt a very close bond to, and affection for, John. He was a kind person, yet with a healthy cynicism that he used to disarm people; I imagine this skill would have come in very handy in the classroom. John was a stoic character and the perfect foil for my more free-spirited moments. He had a nice dry sense of humour and the good sense not to waste much time and effort on silly trends, like the time a number of us took to talking backwards when we were around 14. A friend commented that he had great respect for John’s maturity and suspected that he probably, quite rightly, regarded the rest of us as a little juvenile.

I am really so sorry that we won’t be able to talk again in this life about the old days but I am privileged to have known him well and now to be able to remember him through these words.

Tony Hardy.