Les and Bruce in my thoughts 24th January

The boating community and two families lost two good men on the 24th January. 

2017 Les Biggs and in 2019 Bruce Napier. I knew them initially as good honest interesting funny bloggers, and I met them and they became friends. The common injustice they share is being taken from loved ones far too early. 

My selfishness wanted them to be blogging forever, always enjoying the canals and their boats. It's a lesson to us all they gave us in their untimely and unfair  deaths that we are not here for anything other than the briefest number of passages around our star. 

They were both men of good intellect and great fun, their words alone gave us that. Their shared love and experience of the canals was a great pleasure to all and I am happy to confess to using my work time to read and dream as they chronicalled their retirement on their own boats, sharing their joys and experiences, I will be forever grateful for that.

I don't have a faith, other than to believe we go back to the earth and become something else, maybe eventually that 'something else' we meet again in whatever form, the chaos of matter in the universe can and does bring those parts together and so it did for Jaq with Les and Sheila with Bruce, I'm thinking of you both.

So today I will raise a pint or a glass  of something stronger to these two fellas and thank them for their enthusiasm, their love of the canals and for being two bloody good blokes.