A sad note on which to start a blog, but my longest-standing and closest friend died in August. I had the chance to speak to his daughter earlier this evening and got permission to post the eulogy I gave at his memorial service. Well, the script I prepared for his eulogy. I did deviate from it a bit, but this is what I planned to say.
I had wanted to pepper it with quotations from Irish poets, so I had spent the previous few evenings reading Seamus Heaney and WB Yeats. I didn’t find anything suitable, but it was a measure of the man that even after he’d gone he prompted me to read some wonderful poetry.
How does one describe what a close friend for almost fifty years means to you? Well, begin at the beginning I suppose, and for Derek – Degs – and me the beginning was a cloakroom at Wade Deacon Grammar School for Boys in Widnes, where both of us were hiding from bullies. We quickly discovered that we were both “swots”; a terrible crime in school in the 1960s and the main reason we had to hide from bullies. We found ourselves kindred spirits from the start – similar taste in music, in TV programmes, in philosophy (well, what passes for philosophy when you’re 11 and 13).
One thing that was clear about Degs even then is that he was passionate about what he believed in, and he wasn’t shy about speaking to strangers – I remember him shouting “Jesus loves you” to passing strangers from a car window. Yes, we were proper evangelical fundamentalists back in our teens and twenties, something you’d hardly associate Degs with in his later years. He also made things happen: he was instrumental in getting a Christian Union set up in the school.
After we finished school, Degs always had his ear to the ground for good evangelical fun, be it tent missions, concerts, preachers, or a tiny Christian festival he persuaded me to go to in 1975 in a field in Odell, Northamptonshire. One stage, a couple of burger and doughnut vans: the second ever Greenbelt, a festival that became a spiritual home for Degs (as it was for myself); a festival that started questioning the simple certainties of the faith it started with at about the same time as we did, and moved with us to a faith that was more questions than answers, a faith built of hoping and yearning for something better, and built of trying to bring that about. When the festival started exploring LGBTQ+ issues, and allowed a “safe space” to be set up for “Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Christians and their friends”, there are no prizes for guessing who was there from day one, running the bookstall. There’s no separate “safe space” now, because the whole festival is a safe space, and Degs was a part of that from the ground up. He was due to be there last weekend, and his absence left a big hole in the festival for many of us.
Sadly, in his college days, Degs started to suffer the health problems that dogged him all his life. He was diagnosed as diabetic, but not before the symptoms had made him fall so far behind in the course that he had to rusticate and then drop out. It was a huge disappointment to such a natural academic to have that strand of his life cut off, although he did manage to pick it up again much later and get his degree in Irish Studies.
While I was at university, though, Degs often came down and slept on the floor of my room. After a while, though, I noticed he was spending a bit less time with me, and a lot more with a Modern European Studies student called Jan. It was the start of something wonderful, and if you’ve been following Degs’ page on Facebook you’ll have seen the embarrassing photos of me as best man at their wedding. One thing led to the usual other, and along came Katy, at almost the same time as my son David came along, so as well as everything else we had in common, Degs and I faced fatherhood at the same time too. Katy: he was so proud of you and loved you so much. I know he used to say that for your 18th birthday he’d buy you a ticket to anywhere you liked, as long as it was one-way, but he knew what he was doing. I’m sure it’s clear to you that he wasn’t getting rid of you. Anything but: he was giving you the independence you needed, and I know how close you’ve stayed. And when you thwarted his plans for a dynastic marriage to my David – by marrying someone else – I can’t imagine how you could have made a choice that pleased him more. With Ant, and the rest of the Coggins clan, he discovered that the sort of close community that Liverpool had left behind and that he dreamed of in Ireland was alive and well in Thurnscoe, and that you’d made him a part of it. I saw him buzz with excitement when he talked about it. So Ant, although I expect you married Katie to make her happy, I want to thank you for making Degs happy too.
Degs work situation was always unstable. He moved from job to job, cigarette factory to corner shop, but every now and then he managed to get something that involved being surrounded by books. Those who helped sort out his house are probably wincing at the memory, but Degs did like to be surrounded by books. CS Lewis said, “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me”. Degs could just as easily have said that. The only jobs I heard him be enthusiastic about involved books or other publications, whether it was working in a bookshop in Liverpool, managing a Christian bookshop in North London, working in Mowbrays near Oxford Street, the bookroom at the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, the bookroom at the London Centre for Spirituality, and others I’ve probably missed; sorry, “old men forget”. But again, his health was to keep him from things he loved. Back trouble meant he couldn’t do stock work, and later his diabetes took its toll on his eyesight, and he struggled to read and type. And yes, that did get him down, and I understand he suffered from depression. So what does a person like Degs do when they get depressed? Mope? Become maudlin? Well, I never saw it. Instead, he co-found a theatrical performance group addressing mental health issues, that’s what they do: Lithium Laughter. Once again, Degs saw a need and made things happen.
At this year’s Greenbelt, Kate Bottley said, “God does not want to water us down, he wants to use the best and worst of us. He wants us to be more authentically ourselves.” Degs didn’t need that advice. I’ve never known anyone who was as authentically himself as Degs was. Completely without façade, uncompromisingly himself. And I’ve never known anyone else as warm and natural with strangers as well as friends, who could talk to anyone and put them at their ease. At a folk festival last year, Degs and I were both impressed by one singer. I got her autograph on a copy of her CD that I bought. Degs got her email address and phone number! Woe betide, though, anyone who tried to bully or cheat him or those he cared about – the rest of us learned to just stand back and watch the fireworks.
Degs spoke sometimes of a vision of Heaven that he ascribed to Pete Hammond, though I learn that Degs adapted it and made it his own. He imagined being greeted at the pearly gates by Jesus, who would say something like, “Hello, mate. Sorry about all the crap. Come on in and have a pint.” Well, when we raise a glass to him later – or a mug of tea, he’d be happy with that – I hope he’s out there somewhere raising a divine jug of Heaven’s finest to us, too.
“Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”
2015-09-05
digitig 