[Towards the end of 2023, my dear friend Alan Jeffrey was diagnosed with a brain tumour. It killed him the following July. In November, I spoke at the celebration of his life in Oxford. Today, 17th January 2025, would have been Alan's fifty-eight birthday, so it seems an appropriate time to put up a slightly tweaked version of what I said in November. Miss you, mate.]
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| One of the last photos of me and Alan together, taken in March 2024. There are photos where you don't see quite so directly up his nose, but he's not in focus in them. |
Friends …
I am deeply honoured to be speaking here today, and touched that Alan specifically wanted me to do so. Which means, when you think about it, that everything that follows is actually Alan’s fault. I’d like you to keep that in mind.
When Alan went into hospital earlier this year, Simon Mercer asked me if I wanted to send Alan a message. I replied that of course I did. Here is that message:
‘Get out of bed, you malingering hippy!’
The fact that I knew I could get away with saying that, indeed, that I knew it would bring a smile to Alan’s face, tells you a lot about my friendship with Alan.
I first met Alan Jeffrey in Edinburgh more than forty years ago, in September 1983, when I was eighteen, and he was not remotely old enough to be drinking in the pubs in which we were drinking – but then Alan always could get away with a lot though being tall and self-confident. Fortunately, he never used this power for evil. We met through the science fiction and role-playing societies, found we lived in student houses on the same street in Edinburgh, Gordon Terrace, and we bonded over science fiction, and in particular Doctor Who, comics, and role-playing games. He was smart, funny, erudite and knowledgeable, and his politics were clearly in the right place. We became fast firm friends, quite remarkable considering what a dreadful little shite I was in my late teens and early twenties. I did once throw a drink over him, due to some imagined slight – that was swiftly forgotten and forgiven by him.
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| Alan's cover for a fanzine that I edited roundabout 1984. Thanks to Simon Tett for the scan. Dr Strange is, of course,© and TM Marvel Comics. |
We were soon collaborating, on role-playing scenarios, fanzines, and comics; Alan was a gifted cartoonist, I was a so-so originator of ideas. Such was our contribution to the Edinburgh University role-playing society that we were both awarded honorary life memberships, though I suspect if I turned up there now I would find that no-one currently connected to the society has any memory of that.
When we left Edinburgh, me for Manchester, he for Oxford and then Brighton (via Sweden), we continued our collaborations. To that period belongs out finest work, ‘Steve & Andy’, as illustrated on the t-shirt I am wearing (please don’t ask about the stains, not least because I can’t explain them). This was a series of episodes in the lives of two students, a miserable nerdy one, and his more self-confident friend, a comic probably even more autobiographical than we admitted at the time. I was delighted to learn that Alan still had a page of ‘Steve & Andy’ on his office wall – that page will now take pride of place in my study.
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| A 'Steve & Andy' strip, though not either of the ones mentioned in the text. Thanks to Jeremy Day for the scan. |
I once, presumptuously, described our friendship like that of Morecambe and Wise – since Alan was obviously the tall, handsome one with the glasses, that must make me the one with the short, fat, hairy legs. Alan, naturally laughed at the comparison. But I meant that we understood each other creatively as well as they did, and could spur each other to greater achievements than we could ever manage alone.
We did disagree on some things, though looking back, I have often come to see that Alan was right. Except on crossing the road – I still think he was far too casual about that. Of course, we frustrated each other at times – what close friends don’t? But even that could fuel our creativity. My favourite of all the work we did together, that I’d hoped to show you but couldn’t find, is a comic strip we spitballed after an afternoon when Alan was getting more and more fed up with my relentless negativity – and anyone who’s known me long enough will know how that feels. Two stick figures, identifiably Alan, with his glasses and ponytail, and I, with a mass of uncontrolled curls, are speaking to each other in pictographic speech balloons – his is a flower, mine is a storm cloud. As we talk, the flower gets smaller, and the storm cloud persists. Finally, Alan storms off, his speech balloon now a storm cloud. In the final panel I am alone – and my speech balloon is a flower. My recollection – and fortunately Alan is not here to challenge this – is that the basic idea was Alan’s, but I added the final panel. I think it explains the nature of our friendship better than anything I can say here.
As our respective creative energies became absorbed into our paths as what we now know to call Early Career Researchers (and Jeremy will talk more to that), our collaborations dwindled and then ceased. After he went to the States, naturally we saw less of each other. But we stayed in touch through various forms of social media, and I saw how proud he was of Laura and Janine.
And we still retained that rare friendship where, when we did meet, we just picked up where we left off. Even when I last visited him, in March of this year – and I want to express my thanks to Catherine and David for making that happen – we still had that.
I know that I am reaching the age where I will be going to far more funerals and celebrations of life than to weddings, and I’ve lost friends of my generation already – Claire, Andy, Lesley, among others. Indeed, one of the last times I saw Alan in this country was at John Grandidge’s memorial. But still, fifty-seven is no fucking age, and could he not at least have been allowed to know the UK election results, which he would have found hilarious?
This loss hits me personally worse than most. Still, if, when my time comes, I can face my own imminent demise with half of the dignity and humour with which Alan faced his, I will consider that I have done well.
In any case, this is meant to be a celebration of Alan’s life, and if he is up there, in a heaven that neither of us believed in, he is undoubtedly shouting at me to ‘Get on with it!’
So at this point, rather than do that, I’d like to read a passage from The Lord of the Rings. Alan wasn’t, as far as I can recall, a big Tolkien fan – he preferred his fantasy in a Michael Moorcock mould – but this particular passage says something to me. Meriadoc Brandybuck, hobbit of the Shire, is talking to Aragorn, rightful king in the West.
‘It is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.’
To which Aragorn replies:
‘I know that well, or I would not deal with you in the same way.’
So many of our close friendships are like that. I know mine
with Alan was.
Alan would surely mock mercilessly such sentimentality, and also point out that I’ve gone a bit Alan Bennett’s vicar on you. He would expect me to be witty and irreverent, and I hope I have been. But I don’t think he’d be surprised at me getting sentimental; he knew me better than that. So I want to say, finally, that I am a better person for having known and loved Alan Jeffrey. I’m not quite sure how to deal with a world without him in it. I shall miss him more than I can possibly express, but I am eternally grateful for our time together.
Thank you.
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