I’ve just come back from a couple of days in Somerset attending the funeral of one of my closest friends. Although old enough to be my father, Victor was 82 when he died a couple of weeks ago, we had been friends for almost 35 years since we met when we were both post-grad students: he doing an MA in Art History, me just starting on my doctorate in Chemical Spectroscopy. In the year we spent together at university we became close friends; so close that when Victor’s wife died a couple of years back I was asked to be the celebrant at her funeral, and this week I gave the funeral oration for Victor – which was well received.

How nice then to return to find the following quote (attributed to Muhammad Ali) in my email:

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

I’ll perhaps write more about Victor later; as I said in my eulogy, he was a great man.