My memory of Conrad, who died in April this year, is recorded earlier here.
I missed the walk. Damn it. It wasn’t because arriving early, I spontaneously explored Stratford and the V&A Store room, (see below), as I left that in good time. It was because I got on the wrong train – I’m no longer familiar with the town I once lived in for 15 years.
As the tube was to Holborn, with 2 hours to kill, I naturally gravitated towards the buildings I once occupied during this time of knowing Conrad, the 1990’s. I started working for Imperial Cancer Research after my mother died (and the Berlin wall fell) 1989, perhaps 1991. Under the protective umbrella of Malcolm Clark, I started as document and information officer, and then filled his shoes as User Support Manger. Malcolm introduced me to the British Computer Society. (Malcom was into TeX (Donald Knuth designed it in 1978 to make high-quality math printing easy and uniform across all computers) and introduced me to SGML, you could say a precursor to HTML – this was all a new world to me. Conrad was part of BCS. Together we once gave a lecture on the ‘buzz of the time’ the Internet. (Ron Catterall, our head of IT unit had installed TCP/IP compliant internet across the ICRF, revolutionary in a sea of JANET (Joint Academic network – the protocol commonly used by all academic institutions at the time).
ICRF (Imperial Cancer Research Fund) had labs based at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The operations side, which included IT – were based across the park at no 61.
The main building I could not recognise. I gather from the Wiki history it was sold in 2018 demolised and is now the LSE Marshall Building. See photographs below.
No 61 is now a hotel. As I approached it I remember going for my interview in a suit recently purchased from a stylish Westbourne Grove French friend, and in my pocket (observed later by Malcolm, a packet of Benson and Hedges cigarettes – a colour match, as I smoked rollies at the time). Odd the things I recall. I also remember the tramps on the benches in the park – a good size they were I noted. Why did I never play tennis on those near by courts? Why didn’t I explore that area, look at the street signs as clues to his long history, enter the inns of court more than once?
The Sir John Soanes museum became familiar friend. I would take all visitors who came and the guides called me the unofficial guide. One of the official guides gave me the colour key to the yellow of the sitting room and I painted my Linden Garden flat in that same bright yellow. I still love the colour yellow. Ah those foundations that were being laid then.
Of course, I didn’t know then that trees would become my centre of attention, and then I did not attend to the magnificent Plane trees in the fields. I did now and drew one of them. As I did I thought of Conrad, with some regret that I had not found more recent connection with him. Why am I coming down to this farewell to Conrad (with all the complex arranging, of dog sitter, replacement train, long expensive journey) and I never came down to see him? That question lingers as I finally arrived at the meeting place post the walk the … oak pub.
Dominic put a halt to that lingering question – i cannot remember exactly what he said, but it was firm and allowed that regret to go, as I explored the patchwork of Conrads life with those who came this day. The earliest friend was a colleague from Glasgow University, where Conrad studied – perhaps history we thought. Ah so Glasgow Style, the BCS conference we helped to organise, would have been close to his heart. It was here he first met activism in the form of Christian activism through Stella Jane Reckie, who created the International Flat for refugees and immigrants in the 1970’s (coming over from Uganda etc). Yes, he worked in Manchester but due to the increase of work in London he moved down (hence my log of driving him and his books down in a Luton van)
Kalikellett 