Monsieur Salut mourns the passing of a much-loved friend, former colleague and occasional occupant of Sunderland away ends …
It has been a rotten time as far as bereavement is concerned. My next door neighbour in France, seemingly fit as a fiddle when he came round for drinks nine months ago, fell ill soon after I returned to the UK and died a couple of weeks ago.
Vin Garbutt, one of my favourite folk singers (he was much more than that: a great wit, writer and man) died earlier this month.
And all of us, all of us who are civilised I mean, grieve for those who perish in such appalling disasters as the Grenfell Tower fire or are killed by terrorist toerags (except when they manage to kill only themselves or be killed, as in Paris and Brussels this week).
And now, my own former colleague and friend Graham Noble has passed away.