Pat

I've had a bit of a go slow with posts this week. It's down to a couple of factors, one of which is the passing of a friend of mine. I'd like to talk a little bit about him here, he was a gentleman and I think it's worth saying a few words about him.

I met Pat through his brother, Danny who is my martial arts instructor and a good friend himself. Pat was pretty unlike Danny, who is a gregarious and extremely outgoing kind of man even now as he approaches 60. Pat was a quiet, thoughtful kind of person, someone who would usually say hello have a quiet few words with you and a quiet laugh and then spend some time thinking over what had just passed. Give him the chance to talk about one of his favoured subjects however and the man would suddenly burst into animated discussion and debate on the topic.

The friendship between any two people will never be quite like any other, I'm sure Pat was many different things to many different people, I'm sure there are people who had similar conversations with him as I did, and I am sure there are sides of the man that I simply never saw. To me this is what friendship is, something constructed from the points of view of those involved. The friendship I held with Pat centered on discussions of history, documentaries and those reality television/documentaries you often find on the Discovery or History channels, Ice Road Truckers and the likes. You see Pat was a sponge for knowledge, he consumed it voraciously, through the media of video, film, television and book. He always had something interesting to talk about, even if I just happened to bump into him in the street.

One of his favoured topics as far as I could tell was history, especially the history of martial arts and military history to an extent. His interest in history went beyond the well known names of Bruce Lee or Masaaki Hatsumi, he was interested in the minutiae, from the likes of Mas Oyama and his background and Korean ethnicity to details concerning certain battles that he found interesting, I'll be honest I fail to remember a lot of them now. He was animated and engaging when talking about these topics and he was capable of spotting connections between events and incidents that usually only get talked about at a research level.

Beyond these conversations our friendship was one that often took place as we waited for this or that, as we picked up someone when he was driving to or from classes and demonstrations, as we waited in his and Danny's living room for Danny to get his gear together to go. It was a friendship that happened mostly in the between times of life. This does not mean I will miss it or him any less.

Farewell Pat.