The best part of a week had gone since the publication of the review of the restaurant Temper in The Sunday Times by the time I read it. That week's critic was a woman called Lisa Markwell. I've not come across her before. It's not a bad review but for me is eminently forgettable. Forgettable but for the last line. That line read simply "A A Gill is away". As I read last night the great critic, journalist, wit and alcoholic A A Gill was already dead.
He announced a couple of weeks ago what he called "the full English" breakfast of cancer. His final review in the paper was of the magnificent Magpie Cafe in Whitby home of some of the finest fish and chips in the world. I have long admired his brutal honesty and frankness however much it annoys people. Sometimes we need to tell the truth.
I will miss his work in my weekly dabble with the paper. And the world will miss him.
Some weeks ago my friend Mala mentioned something that I think was called the dark side identified by the psychotherapist Carl Jung. Not the dark side of Star Wars fame but the unsaid that people all know is true but never speak about. I'm often guilty of enlightening the dark side with my sometimes cynical and jaded comments on the world I work in. A former friend who was a retired fireman told me they survived the grim reality with a kind of dark and macabre humour. Sometimes I get into trouble for it but many do appreciate it.
That is perhaps the only thing I have in common with the aforementioned critic who moved in very different circles to me.
Back on another Sunday the paper lies unread. Much of its content will talk of this man. I will relish it as he is no more.
Until next time.
I Heard a Voice.
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