Dear all,

 

Thank you to those of you who kindly alerted me sad news of passing of Patrick this Sunday.  He had been an old friend who I have known for most of my life.    

 

 Patrick, recently demobbed from the RAF where he had been a navigator with Bomber Command, was my house master at Holmewood House School when I went there in 1947.  My father and his Lancaster crew from 630 Squadron had been shot down returning from a mission in Germany in May 1944 http://www.flensted.eu.com/1944078.shtml  so I was eventually packed off to boarding school.  I hated boarding school and used to run away back home at the beginning of each term.  My widowed mother used to phone Patrick and tell him she was putting me in a taxi and would he to collect me on arrival. 
 Patrick was the only person outside the immediate family to know the date my mother was to remarry.  He came and told me that I had a new father.  Later I was furious with my mother for going off and marrying Hugh my best friend!  

My mother had a fascination for astrology and had Patricks astrological chart done by Fred Ward, one of her professional astrologer friends.  He predicted that David’s young schoolmaster would become a famous household name known to many around the world.  Patrick in later years seems to have overlooked this prophecy and when I reminded him he declared that astrology can’t work. 

 

During those hard post-war times when everything was rationed, Patrick’s mode of transport from the school at Langton, a few miles from Tunbridge Wells, was by ancient motorcycle - not one but two.  This was because they were both unreliable and difficult to start, so if one failed it was hoped the other might function.  Being a mischievous and mechanically minded boy I noticed that his mounts that intrigued me were held together with medical tape and fencing wire, which was Patrick’s non-scientific remedy for fixing these machines.  He declined my offer to better repair them.  Because of their sometimes explosive and regular unpredictably he aptly named one Vesuvius and the other Stromboli.  From Patrick we learned the basics of one of his favourite games, chess.  Cricket was another of his passions, and his slow off-spin bowling would frequently catch a practiced batsman’s wicked.  Watching the 6-foot tall Patrick running up to bowl was reminiscing of a heavy wartime bomber slowly gaining speed for takeoff as with long strides he approached to launch the ball. 

 

 



What is not so well known is Patrick was a fantastic musician on the piano and xylophone as well as composing two operettas and answering several requests to compose regimental tunes, some I have on a tape he gave me.  He used to write the music for the school plays.  Patrick was a most generous person always willing to help others. 





Each Christmas of I would eagerly wonder what card Patrick would send us with one of his charming mother, Gertrude’s, space cartoons. 



These have now been published in a book



In recent years I used to visit Patrick during our visits to England, but our small dog that we had adopted was NOT allowed in for fear of annoying his two feline friends.  On arrival one first had to go through the ‘cat-trap’, a kind of airlock of double doors so his beloved cats could not escape outside and risk being rundown by a passing car. 



 



Patrick with cat in the caged enclosure attached to his thatched house.  

 

The BBC talk about Patrick:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20658800   

 

Wikipedia update:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore


 

 Same years ago I introduced a good friend, the TV producer Charles Wallace, to Patrick and he made a DVD, now a unique biographical and historical record that is most amusing amusaing:    http://www.movingimageco.com/The%20Astronomical%20Patrick%20Moore.html

 





  Patrick at his 1908 Woodstock typing machine that he used to write to me on. 

Photo Charles Wallace. 

Charles has just publishes a book about his friendship with another personality, Eric Morecombe and the downfall of British TV.  I recommend this book as an interesting and most amusing insight behind the scenes of television during its hay day:  www.movingimageco.com  From time to time Charles would call me and ask my view on a topic he was working on or ideas for an unusual film location.  One such was for the last film he was making with Eric and I took Charles first to my old school at Chiddingstone Castle, and then to nearby Heaver Castle in Kent.  Unfortunately Eric died before filming at the latter location had been completed.   


Some of my photos during our visits to Patrick in the last couple of years. 

 

19/7/2010.  Afternoon tea with Patrick who is enjoying another large G&T in his study. 


  12/7/2011. Maria and I called in to have lunch with Patrick.

 

 

The BBC published a nice piece about Patrick:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20657939

A sad loss of an old friend from my childhood that I have known and regularly chatted with over sixty-five years. 

Now perhaps he is where he wanted to be, up amongst the stars.