On the death of Colin Wallace

[Icke]

WHEN I was a greasy-haired urchin of 19 or so I used to hang out with a greasy-haired 40-something photographer called

Colin Wallace. We worked together on a weekly seaside newspaper, the Teignmouth News, where I was what used to be called in

the olden days a 'cub' reporter and Colin was what used to be termed a 'snapper'.

We did very little work and got away with repeated murder. Instead of wedding photography and bowls match reports, Colin

and I would prop our asses up on stools at the Ship Inn, a local harbourside pub where trawlermen would stop by to flog

black-market mackerel. This was 1983 and there were no mobile telephones or even those heavy brick-like phones that used to

come attached to cars. So we were protected from newsdesk intervention during our 'field work'. If anybody rang the pub,

the genial bearded landlord would shoot us a conspiratorial wink and tell the caller he hadn't seen either of us all day.

And with that we'd order another drink before sidling back to the office, pissed up and stinking, with faces that protested

innocence.

Actually, I knew two people called Colin at that time. The other Colin, Colin Highgate, was about my age and worked on the

boats. He had a leather biker jacket, thick curly hair and lively eyes. I went out on young Colin's birthday pub crawl

once. It was just me and him and we went to three or four pubs, striding down the middle of the street between each stop.

We owned these streets. Colin had a new shirt on and had scrubbed up a bit - he looked very smart. Somewhere I have a black

and white photograph of young Colin in a pair of wooden stocks, being pelted lightly with sodden sponges by a couple of

saucy birds in bikinis. The picture was taken by the other Colin during the annual Teign Harbour Festival. I really wish Colin Highgate was alive today, I really do. He died when we were both still young bucks, aged 20 or so, from a strange disease called Good Pastures or Good Samaritans or something. I think of him every time I drive past Highgate tube. The name reminds me of him. I owed him money when he died. Not a lot of cash, a few quid, but I feel bad about it all the same.

The older Colin and I went to his funeral together. It was kind of strange seeing these rough old fishermen in suits and

ties. Colin (the older one) had aviator shades on. I think I reported on the funeral for the paper.

Photographer Colin was a wise old dog with a scruffy mane of greying black hair, a shabby grey sports jacket, a hacking cough for a laugh and a brusque demeanour that won him friends and foes in equal measure. He had a number of catch phrases. If a large woman loomed into view he'd mumble 'If you can find it, you can 'ave it' under his breath. That's one example.

He claimed to be an ex-member of Marty Wilde's Wildcats. I have no idea if that claim held any truth and I have no desire to Google his name to find out, to be honest. If he wanted to believe it, I wanted to as well. He said he did the bass notes on 'Sea Of Love'. I was most impressed. Not least because Iggy Pop had covered the song. I like Iggy.

Colin had a very young daughter with a speech impediment and a short-haired wife called Janet, who seemed to have settled into the role of the business brains behind the outfit they called Colin Wallace Photography. Although Colin was employed by the paper, he liked to dabble with ad hoc work covering weddings and the like. Oh, and a bit of glamour photography if he thought he could get away with it.

He drove a spectacular white sports car - maybe a Triumph Spitfire or something similar - at speed through the lanes that linked Teignmouth and nearby Dawlish, where he lived. Once he stayed at my flat above the newspaper office where I worked, but most of the time he would pelt through the night with far too many whiskies in his blood, adding a new ding to the Spitfire's lightly battered wing.

We covered royal visits, Royal Navy visits and right royal piss-ups in the name of her majesty's press. I have a photograph of us riding together in a hot air balloon. That was a spectacular blag. Our drink of choice was whiskey and lemonade. "Mine's a large one," Colin would cackle in his baritone smoker's laugh.

Once a week or so, we'd zip over the river to Shaldon, for a drink with Rodney Hallworth, the nominal editor of the Teignmouth News. Rodney was an incredible character, as gentle as he was fierce. I'd take each week's Teignmouth News, hot off the press, to him at his regular barside seat in the pub owned by Alan Beer, the former Exeter City footballer, and watch him tear it up in a blind rage. "Fucking amateurs!" he'd seeth at some unfortunately inaccurate headline or another. Then he'd buy me and Colin a drink and talk about this and that.

If I couldn't afford to get a drink back, he'd go rightly mental. "You never, EVER, walk into a pub without any fucking money!" he'd boom across the bar at me and everybody else. But when he was fond of me, he'd call me his protogee and I liked being called that. Rodney was (probably) the last of the proper Fleet Street hacks and a hero to me. He'd been chief crime reporter on the Daily Mail. He started the Scotland Yard pepperpot collection. He covered the Great Train Robbery. He was the last person to speak to Ruth Ellis before she went to the gallows.

Rodney wrote a book called 'Where There's A Will' but he never talked about it. I looked for a copy for more than 20 years and then found two at once. Aint that the horse's ass. Rodney complained about his angina a lot, and he walked very slowly. The other people in the office called him the world's ugliest man. One day he died. At the funeral, Colin brought out his aviator shades again and at the wake I cried a lot. The Mayor of Teignmouth took me to one side and whispered, "If anybody asks, we'll say you've got flu." Rodney had a jazz musician play 'Bye Bye Blackbird' at his funeral as a dying request. I think I'd like something like that to happen. I'd like someone to play 'Do Anything You Wanna Do' by Eddie and the Hot Rods.

Colin Wallace told me that when he died, he'd like someone to put a camera and a couple rolls of blank film in his coffin with him, and: "If I can get 'em back to you, I will." He told me this more than a few times and I wonder if he did that because he really, really wanted me to do it? If it came to it, like?

Well, yesterday afternoon I got a text or 'txt' as the kids call it these days from an old girlfriend. It read: "I bumped into Cedric (my old news editor on the Teignmouth News) and he said Colin and Janet Wallace are both dead." I was so saddened. I leaned on the railings outside Somerfield in Kentish Town Road and felt my eyes fill up as I thought all the thoughts that I've just written down here - about the younger Colin, Rodney, the pubs, the fishermen, the daughter with the speech impediment and all that.

And I got to thinking, will I get 'Do Anything You Wanna Do' played at my funeral? And who will be there? When will I die and what will it be like? And will I be able to get films to Colin's funeral? Or has the service been and gone already?

Then came a flash of inspiration: Hey, Colin's probably gone digital anyway.

And then I heard his old cackle again, loud in my head, as clear as it had sounded in 1983. And I saw his grubby grey jacket in my mind's eye. And I thought of Rodney and his 'Bye Bye Blackbird', and I thought of the younger Colin and how I wish I'd paid him the money I owed him. And then I cried more. And I'm crying now.

[de lacey]

i think it's important to bear witness to the beauty of the human condition, without, if possible,allowing yourself being overwhelmed by a sense of it's possible futility.

[Ketchup]

ace

totally

[pauloso]

Brilliant and beautiful.

[Cold Ethyl]

very moving Andy- i used to laugh at my mam and dad with all their harking back to the past stuff, but as i've aged, i realise that time isn't as simple as a straight line, and that the past can be as alive to us and as real as the present.

[rover]

Beautiful.
Thanks for that...

[rover]

In retrospect, I am not sure that my comments needed the ellipsis.

[Northern Pete]

Lets Go Fucking Mental, Lets go Fucking Mental (lalaLaLa)
Lets Go Fucking Mental, Lets go Fucking Mental (lalaLaLa)

[Thing2]

I'm glad I took the time to read that

[Lettuce Spray]

Your words prove, if proof were needed, that people live on for as long as there are people around who cherished them. Thank you for taking the time to share this with us.

[de lacey]

Peter:

"Lets Go Fucking Mental, Lets go Fucking Mental (lalaLaLa)
Lets Go Fucking Mental, Lets go Fucking Mental (lalaLaLa)"

vs

Gary:

"Your words prove, if proof were needed, that people live on for as long as there are people around who cherished them. Thank you for taking the time to share this with us."

ying and yang?

[Northern Pete]

Peter:

"Lets Go Fucking Mental, Lets go Fucking Mental (lalaLaLa)
Lets Go Fucking Mental, Lets go Fucking Mental (lalaLaLa)"

vs

Gary:

"Your words prove, if proof were needed, that people live on for as long as there are people around who cherished them. Thank you for taking the time to share this with us."

ying and yang?

Zig and Zag?

[NicholasVanWotsisface]

Terry and June?

[Northern Pete]

Terry and June?

I'll play June to Pale Fox's Terry.

[Lettuce Spray]

Sounds good to me. Can someone remind me of my catchphrase ?