Bryan Howard Smith

  FOR BRYAN HOWARD SMITH

I am shocked and saddened to learn from my local paper of the passing of one of my oldest pals from school. Howard Smith was simply one of the nicest people it was ever my privilege to meet. We met occasionally over the years since school days and he was unerringly friendly warm and affectionate toward me. Genuinely interested in what I was doing and always solicitous of my well being. I first bumped into him after I returned to Oxford in the late seventies when he dropped by the Museum of Modern Art where he had come to install CCTV and he acknowledged me immediately and we spent the next few days he was installing systems there chatting and catching up. I learned with joy he had married his childhood sweetheart, Mandy, and this somehow seemed right and I told him so.  I last saw him over a year ago, after last Easter I think, and it was, as ever, a delight to bump into him. He shared he had dropped by 'the blog nobody reads and enjoyed reading whatever I had rambled on about, which was kind and in tribute to him and our happy school days I posted this a year ago now and it was a tribute to my friend, Bryan Howard Smith:

"I bumped into Howard in my local Sainsburys over Easter and he is a sterling fellow, loyal, friendly, a true yeoman, the sort of man you could trust with pretty much anything. He married his childhood sweetheart Mandy, though I was saddened to learn they are divorced now but they were as youngsters the ideal couple, both good looking and both as  nice as it’s possible to be and I wasn’t surprised to learn he was on his way round to see her when we bumped into each other. We were childhood school friends, he was the year below me at school here in Oxfordshire and we had many a happy summer dawdling about the village where he lived. Islip is just North of Kidlington which itself is some 5 miles north of Oxford.

 

There were three pals from that village who came to be schooled in Kidlington; Howard, or Bryan as he was introduced to me and still to this day people will call him Bryan but he chose his other first name and earnestly asked us to call him Howard from then on, which most of us managed tho’ it still plagues him, which made all his pals laugh (thought him, not so much!), close friend Trevor Timms and Kevin Gunston or the legendary “Gunner” (of course! ED). I was infatuated with Trevor’s breathtakingly beautiful sister and Gunner’s mum ran the local pub, the Red Lion

I have an indelible memory of summers spent in Islip, learning to row in Howard’s little boat on the beautiful river of Islip, a tributary of the Cherwell itself a tributary of the Thames. Bucolic days of sunshine and oars dipping in the river and his energetic little Jack Russell ratting down every available nook and cranny of the riverbank. I reminded him of this and he even recalled how much that little rowboat had cost him all those years ago. £17! All that happiness for seventeen quid! Another friend, Leon, when informed I had bumped into our erstwhile pal, has memories of playing in Howard’s family shop and playing pea shooters as there an inevitable endless supply of dried peas on hand in the store room!

Aaah the peashooter! Never mind your Playstation 3 and your Wii, we had fun those days, sitting around the playing field learning how to roll cigarettes and playing peashooters in the cold store of the village shop.

Howard, sir, I salute you.

I do salute him now as I did then and know I am not alone in saying that I shall miss him. My thoughts go out to his friends, his family and all those who knew him