Thanks for the memories, Sticks

Dave was in the same year as me at school.

He was tall - one of the tallest boys in our year - and slim, so we called him ‘Sticks’.

We were in different classes and had gone to different primary schools so we weren’t close friends, but we were on friendly terms.

I remember going to a party at his house. I was 14 or 15 and it was the first ‘proper’ party I had been to where the host’s parents were away and alcohol was freely available.

I wore my favourite mustard coloured shirt (it was the Seventies) and it’s one of the few teenage parties I have genuinely fond memories of.

A few years later he was one of the first people in my year group to own his own car. He had at least three, all Hillman Imps, two of which he cannibalised to provide parts for the one that was just about roadworthy.

After we left school (in June 1976) Dave, ‘Titch’ Little and I enrolled on a two-week potato roguing course at Elmwood Agricultural College in Cupar, Fife.

Thereafter, for three successive summers (1976, 1977, and 1978), we were part of a four-man potato roguing team led by Bill Smith, an art teacher from Ellon in Aberdeenshire who is now a polar guide and explorer.

We went to the same university (Aberdeen) but rarely saw each other because we were in different faculties, and living in different halls of residence.

Also, while Dave played rugby and I played hockey, we moved in different circles, apart from Saturday afternoons when our respective teams were both playing at home.

We lost contact after university and I didn’t see him for years. Then, quite by chance, I was with a mutual friend from school and we bumped into him in a bar in London, as you do.

That must have been 30 years ago and it was the last time I saw him in person. We did however reunite on Facebook a decade or so ago and I was able to piece together what he had been doing.

After he left university he got a job in the oil industry, working on oil rigs in the North Sea. One of his more poignant Facebook posts, posted on the 36th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster, read:

In over 40 years working offshore I have never seen or ever wish to see such a tragic series of events as unfolded on Piper Alpha. That 167 personnel had to lose their lives at work to ultimately make the North Sea a much safer place to work is so desperately sad. I will raise a glass to all those lost souls tonight.

A keen sailor, he subsequently spent a lot of time in Greece where he owned what I think was a yacht charter business.

But his adult home, to which he would always return, was in Oban, on the west coast of Scotland, where he was an active member of the local rugby club.

The first sign that all was not well, health wise, appeared in April last year when he informed his Facebook friends that ‘for the last 25 days I have been a patient at the QEUH in Glasgow following emergency colon surgery’.

In December he was back in hospital having a cancerous tumour removed, and in April this year he posted an update:

It’s 20 months since I first was aware of a problem and 16 months since my colon tumour diagnosis. Since then I have had major surgery twice, radiotherapy and eight cycles of chemotherapy …

Thereafter his Facebook feed returned to ‘normal’ - that is, photos of Greece, aboard yachts, or at some beachside bar. There were also the usual rugby-related posts.

He looked fit and well (he continued to cycle, swim, and travel) and didn’t mention his illness again.

And then, two days ago, I read that he had died. Maybe I should have seen it coming but I didn’t and I am genuinely shocked, and sad.

If there is some consolation for his family, the tributes on social media make it clear that he was hugely popular with his peers, several of whom refer to him as a ‘gentle giant’ and someone who made a difference to other people’s lives.

My hope is that he lived to see Scotland beat Australia at Murrayfield last weekend. As a proud Scot, and rugby man, he would have enjoyed that.

Dave, aka ‘Sticks’, earlier this year