I love my month of appreciation posts, but as they are a finite collection of honest reflections of my past self, I am reluctant to edit them beyond catching the odd typo on a reread. This leads to a pretty broad discrepancy in quality, post to post, either based on who I was when I wrote them or how much time I had to sink into them. In turn this does some people a disservice (and perhaps gives some people too much credit, but I wont deduct points in post).
Day one of a series of possibly only one ammendation addresses the candidate for day 16: Huw.
This fucking boy. Elevator pitch, Huw is the half way house between loving labrador, and wise old hippy. Probably because he was raised by two wise old hippies and a loving labrador. He is as enthusiastic drinking ale in a medieval tavern as he is drinking an old fashioned in a stylish bar, or half a bottle of malbec in one gin goblet, with me, in a house in which neither of us live. (With permission, though it would otherwise be a better story.) He will sleep on sofas, floors, outdoors, or in crawl spaces full of storage, anywhere dry. Probably that isnt a prerequisite.
In 2019 I hosted a magnificent and expensive masquerade ball to very prematurely announce my departure from the country in which I still reside nine months later. As a feature of this event, I wanted to play social chemistry, and devised a system of pairs of matching badges with free drinks attached, to encourage people to mingle outside of their groups with characters I knew they would appreciate. Whilst plotting combinations, there was close to zero people for whom “I could match them with Huw!” Didnt immediately spring to mind. This boy is a power card, a true spectacle, an unreflective social butterfly which rivals and potentially surpasses my own self. Throughout that same evening he captivated and entranced, and represented himself and his hosts in the highest degree. I tell this story partly because I love remembering that I threw a motherfucking ball, and partly because it demonstrates the fluid ease with which this boy makes acquaintance with the world around him.
Interestingly to me, his approach is very different from my own. Where I am fully self assured and selective, Huw is modest, humble, open, sincere, his charm lies in his unreserved belief that everyone is interesting, and that he would be doing a disservice to himself by not taking the opportunity to befriend a new stranger. For real he is a force of nature, this is a field in which I perform devilishly well and he trumps me in spades.
He is also one of my kindest advisors, a man who will earnestly and passionately talk at any length about any problem you look to discuss, trade anecdotes and wisdoms. His shade of wisdom is unique to the range of characters in my life, it is born of the simple things, warmth, appreciation, and time for little luxuries, but has a complexity and depth which belies an old soul.
This goalless ramble like its subject has abundant good will and a moderate deficit of structure, ah well. I love Huw very dearly, my life would be much poorer without him in it, and as he is very very far away presently during this mighty strange and uncertain time, I dont know when his path will next cross my own. I doubt it will be soon. Yet he is family to me, he is a little brother and possibly in the correct mood, also an eccentric grandfather. And to that end, distance and time irrespective, I hope he knows that I am with him always, available whenever he needs anything, ride or die, be it to chat or to hide a body.
