Happy Christmas to all our visitors. JEG was a huge fan of Christmas and no one knew that better than a dear friend of his, Simon Daryl Wood. The Gardner family have known Simon for a very long time indeed and recently Simon has had his own work of fiction published (Fairy Story available at Amazon), something I know John would have loved to have seen. I hope over the coming year that Simon will be able to contribute his thoughts on JG to this site. To start with here is how they first met.

In 1966 I was the most ordinary of young men. I was twenty-one years of age, finding my way in life and working at the time for Cogswell & Harrison, gunmakers, 168 Piccadilly, London.

London in the 1960s was an exciting place to be. There was Carnaby Street, The Beatles and Rolling Stones. It was the time of James Bond, The Man From Uncle, Harry Palmer or any other secret agent you care to name . . .

There was a bell above our shop door.

One day it rang. I didn't know it at the time, but it rang for me.

My life was about to change irrevocably.

Bruce, our ruddy-faced master-gunmaker, came down the stairs to where I was eating lunch and said, "There's an odd geezer up in the shop. I'm busy. See what he wants."

I duly abandoned my sandwich.

Our customer was a tall, lean, well-tanned man, aged about forty. He wore an impeccable suit, shirt and tie, over which was casually draped a Burberry raincoat.

"May I help you, Sir?" I asked tentatively.

Simon Daryl WoodSimon Daryl Wood

"Yes," he said, reaching into his jacket. "I need a shoulder-holster for this."

The customer produced a chromium-plated cigarette lighter in the form of a .22 Beretta automatic pistol. On the grips in self-adhesive letters were the initials B.O.

Being at the time an aficionado of spy movies, I immediately put two and two together, for only the previous evening I had been to the London Pavilion cinema to see The Liquidator.

Knowing that guns held strange fascinations for people and, of course, being so worldy-wise at my tender age, I said to him, "Ah! Playing at being Boysie Oakes, are we, Sir?"

"No," he said, treating me to a withering smile, "I am Boysie Oakes."

And so began my forty-year friendship with John Gardner.

I cannot begin to list the gifts John brought into my life. He taught me an appreciation of art, literature and music, even getting me [who was at the time an ardent fan of The Shadows] to like Mahler and Wagner. He taught me irony and understatement, told me the most disgusting jokes, and never let go of his schoolboy sense of humour. Nothing made him collapse into uncontrollable laughter like the sound of a good rip-snorter. God [John was never certain] bless him. Nothing was taboo. Nothing ever escaped his acerbic wit and sublime sense of the absurd.

We were pals. John introduced me to a feast of experiences—people and places I would otherwise never have encountered—and has left me with a treasure-house of memories.

The name's Gardner—John Gardner. Nobody does it better.

I owe him more than I can ever repay, and I miss him.

Simon Daryl Wood

http://www.simondarylwood.com/

Happy Christmas Everyone, the competition I mentioned last month has been delayed slightly and will happen in the New Year. My apologies.

Simon Gardner Dec 2011