I probably need to preface this rather maudlin ramble with the information that I am actually having a wonderful holiday this year. I spent the start of it in London, soaking up the heat and wallowing in theatre. I then spent three days being creative for my book binding group, and since Monday, there've been sparks coming off my finger ends - I've totalled 6,000 words in 3 days which is a pretty good total and the 'muse' is (touch wood) being very kind to me. And I think part of the reason why I'm enjoying it so much is because I'm not having to 'recover' from the day job the way I used to do for the first five weeks of the holidays. The difference this year has made is unbelievable: I feel younger, fitter, so much happier, more confident in myself and my abilities. It's been a really tough year - I haven't worked this hard since I was a newly qualified teacher - but I've really -with hindsight - enjoyed it. I know I've been incredibly lucky to get this second chance and I'm so grateful for it.
However, today, I'm allowing myself to feel a just a little sad. Being back at the school where I was a pupil, I've inevitably spent the year feeling deeply nostalgic. And the year I've remembered most is the year I turned thirteen.
When I was thirteen, you see, I fell in 'love', as thirteen years olds are wont to do, with an actor. Being me, of course, I didn't go for someone anyone really famous: no movie star or pop idol for me - no, my heart was 'stolen' by an English actor with the bluest of eyes, the sweetest of smiles and a voice, which even now I have no trouble recalling in my head. He would turn up, now and then, in TV programmes or films and my world would stop as I drank in every detail of his performance: no videos then, let alone internet to keep tabs on him so I had to make the most of every opportunity. I even wrote to him - a probably very silly, breathless letter - and he answered with a signed photograph which became my most treasured possession. And then, he just seemed to disappear. I caught glimpses of him in adverts; he did the occasional voice over. I grew up, passed exams, discovered 'real' theatre and 'proper' acting, (as well as 'real' life and 'proper' love) and although I never forgot him (you never do forget the ones you loved at 13, do you?) he was no longer the first thing in my head when I woke and the last thing in my head when I slept.
And then, one day in 1993 I discovered he had died. He was still young and something about the obituary I read told me that there was more to the story than the bare facts of his death. It was later I read that he had killed himself, hopeless, helpless, feeling unloved and surrounded by what he considered to be a disappointment of a life. I wept for him, the night I found out, and I've wept for him since and I know I will again. A few years ago, idly googling, I found a facebook page in his memory and made contact with a group of lovely people who had also loved, also lost and also remembered him As one lady there once said, he was our Elvis equivilent and I think that probably says it all. Today we've marked the 20th anniversary of his death with a kind of virtual get-together in lieu of a real meeting.
It's been a good day and a sad day, a day I'd prefer not to have to mark, but one I'll still raise a glass to while I'm here. To 'my' Gerry - he touched more lives than he could ever have imagined, and I'm proud to say one of them was mine. Cheers.
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