‘Ah, breakfast! - Best meal of the day!’


So said the improbably towering, pin-striped figure striding into the communal room, seemingly preceded by his beaming smile, on what must have been one of my first mornings at Quaker International Centre, London, where I had just joined the residential staff in late 1984. This was my introduction to Simon, and it was sufficient for me to form an instant liking for him and a strong wish to get to know him.


Breakfasts aplenty followed - but so did dinners over the following six months or so, before Simon moved out to take up residence in his own house in Finchley. During that time he had been such delightful and informative company that I viewed his departure with dismay; fortunately he had no intention of abandoning his friends at Q.I.C., and our extended conversations continued via his frequent visits.


Simon introduced me to many things: the RADA student productions at the nearby Vanbrugh Theatre; a widened range of literary and musical tastes; various opulent bookshops; the fine-tuning of satirical humour that somehow stayed just on the right side of generosity; a glimpse of what it was to be ‘English to the core’ as our mutual friend Neil Pickering once admirably put it (fully-formed Englishness still being something of a novelty to me as a Welshman); the Rembrandt self-portrait in Kenwood House; how to keep paperback books in mint condition; the glorious, uproarious, comic potential of broken porcelain (see Neil’s tribute on these pages); and - unintentionally and un-self-consciously, I’m certain - the iron grip of conscience and a sense of duty.


After I left London I regret having seen less and less of Simon. He visited me once in Wales after the birth of my first son, and I visited him and Suang-Eng once at their home some years later. This was, perhaps inevitably, no longer ‘like breakfast,’ if I may so put it. I think now that youthful Quakerism had lodged in neither of us; he remained in, or returned to, Anglicanism of an evangelical persuasion, and I returned to agnosticism and scepticism. Perhaps that is partly (and very partially) why our correspondence didn’t last, and perhaps it’s more because the carefree hilarity of those first couple of years in London belonged explicitly to its own time.


Simon could (and routinely would) make his friends laugh ‘like drains’ (as he put it), and he himself certainly knew how to laugh. When I think of him, I picture him chortling irresistibly and infectiously; the pleasure we took in his laughter always recognised, and always respected, his underlying seriousness, whilst acknowledging his fondness for simple joys.


Breakfasts really were the best meals of those days. Thank you, Simon.