Goodbye Old Horse

            Arnold Chave died at lunchtime on February 15th 2020. I found out via a friend, well over a day later. He was very ill when I went to see him in hospital a few weeks before. In my mind I had made my farewells then.   

         We had been close friends for 59 years,ever since we first met at the same Coventry comprehensive school, Caludon Castle in Wyken. We shared common interests in Pop music, buses, trains and model railways. He only lived a few streets away so it was natural that we should see quite a lot of each other. He always had a great sense of humour. I used to get him into trouble in lessons because (whilst keeping a deadpan expression), I could get him near hysterical by whispering crazy things or shoving obscene caricatures of our teacher,s drawn in my rough book under his nose. Or throwing my voice to make it seem that odd noises were coming from him. Later we shared adult interest in Pythonesque humour, Films, the joy of “live" music, Trade Unions and the pursuit of Real Ale. 

          When I left school I went  on to a College in South London. Arnie worked for a while in the Tax office in Coventry and found romance, but quite quickly afterwards he moved south too. Into a tiny flat in Sternhold Avenue just down the road from me in SW16. In my third year there, along with two other blokes, we shared a flat in Upper Norwood before I married and moved back to Coventry. For a while Arnie lived with his first wife in Brockley. Eventually Arnie himself enrolled at Teacher Training College. Then Coventry College, now The University of Warwick,it was in his home town this time,and he moved back too.

        That was a great time for me. Although I had already started teaching in an Inner City School, through Arnie I met a whole new raft of student friends and the fun began all over again.I played in their football teams, went to their gigs and I drank in their bar.  Arnold even came on teaching practice to my school. I always retained my ability to make him laugh and in one assembly, he famously had to stuff a hankie in his mouth as I gurned impressions of the Head teacher at him, across a hall full of schoolchildren.

        It was about 1974-5 when he and I first started mucking about with songwriting. We began to take it seriously and Black Parrot Seaside was born. We recruited various band members but two of the regulars, Eddie and Mick were also students and would reappear when the band reconstituted in 2006. We stayed in that format until 2014. We made two albums: one in vinyl recorded in London, one on a CD released in 2008. There was lots of our shared love of comedy and Absurdism involved in recording and writing material for both.

       I was best man at his first and third weddings. Our families went on Holidays en famille together.  First in North Wales and then later, abroad to Britanny and the Vendee. Even after our kids grew up and left home, he joined Mags and I on trips to Paris Rome and Barcelona. We had a real laugh. We played subbuteo together, went fishing together and rode steam trains together. 

        We both served as officers on the executive of the local NASUWT. Annually we went away to Conferences, which whilst having their serious moments, always ended up with us crying with laughter and sitting up in a hotel bar until 2am boosing.  

          Eventually we both became Head Teachers. We calmed down a little bit. I saw less of Arnie as he climbed the promotion ladder.  Eventually, besides being a Head, he also became an Adviser. ( That was always going to happen). We both became part of the Governing Body of Plas Dol Y Moch, a beautiful residential Outdoor Education Centre in Snowdonia. We had some great times there, too. Arnie was head of a Special School and I was Head of a Primary School. In an early precursor of Inclusion, we both took parties of kids from both schools there at the same time. Some were anxious about this, but it worked. The kids and staffs picked up on our friendship and fed on it. 

       There were times when Maggie and I didn’t see him for years,and he went through some tough times. When he did he knew there was always a hot meal, a spare bed a shoulder to cry on and a constant supply of his beloved red wine wherever we were living.

              In 2014 he and I fell out big time. Not over politics because we always saw eye to eye on that. Not religion (ditto). It was not over a woman, not over professional beliefs or bringing our kids up wrong. Ironically, it was over music. Arnie stormed out of a particularly acrimonious rehearsal at my house in 2014 vowing to break the group up. He did exactly that and sadly, he never ever came to our house again. 

               Musically we finally went our separate ways. He had one vision and I think I had another. I was without an instrumentalist for the first time in 30 years. I had to adapt to several others or give up completely.   We  found we still had many shared interests though and that shared sense of humour never left us. After a bitter few years when neither of us spoke to each other much at all, we agreed mutually to at least bury the hatchet on social occasions.  It was an armistice, of a kind. 

         Some people who think they knew him weren't aware of his alter egos. Bodo Bisp. Ted Explosion. Derek Gooserun. Throughout almost 60 years of friendship, Arnie and I also had secret pet names for each other. In times of bereavement or loss or just when The Black Dog was in pursuit of one or both of us, we began our correspondence with “Hello Old Horse.”  This was a reference to the film Little Big Man, where Dustin Hoffman played one of two wily centenarians reminiscing back over their years on opposite sides before they became friends.

         Arnie is out of pain now and at peace. I truly regret every moment of ever making him unhappy and making him disappointed in me, but they were far out weighed by half a century of memories and having fun together. I enjoyed every second of that.   Sleep well Old Horse.