Funeral For A Friend

Not the band unfortunately, but literal this time.

Today we said our farewells to our old friend JP. To avoid confusion I should point out which JP because it seems I know a few, this was Jonathan Prior bruv (as he always called everyone).

By their very nature funerals are always sad and it was nice to see a lot of people who remembered JP fondly.

My old friend and oddball drummer Duncan was there as well, he was the person who introduced me to JP in the first place anyway.

I have to be honest, I'm not sure what I'm really writing about here, but what struck me and always strikes me with these things was that at 39 JP believed as we mostly do that he had a long life ahead of him yet to live. Even when my father died last year after a brief battle with cancer being much older he had a list of regrets. JP didn't get the chance to list regrets because his was sudden, but as with all of us there would have been many things he planned to do but never got round to. I know he always considered learning guitar proper'y for example. I'm not saying that would have been his biggest regret or anything like that, but it's just one thing I know of.

When I was walking out I couldn't help thinking of the things I plan to do instead of doing, the things I put off for another day, often to the annoyance of future Tim who frankly views past Tim as being a bit lazy. Current Tim however is often happy to leave things to future Tim. If you have not seen the Ted talk about the procrastinating monkey, I recommend you watch it. Past Tim watched it and sometimes future Tim is happy about that.

Long and short of it though is stop talking about doing things, stop wishing you were doing things, just get out and do them. Don't worry about failing, it's the only way you learn, don't worry about being laughed at.Remember Jim Davidson? People will laugh at anything even if it's not funny at all. That goes for me too of course. I'm quite good, I do most the things I want to, but I do put off a lot of things till tomorrow and I should stop doing that.

Tonight however I'll put some more things off and open a bottle of wine, sit back, relax and remember JP.

Miss you my friend, as all of us who knew you will, it was a pleasure to be your friend.

Goodbye bruv

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