Pete

Today is the funeral of my friend Pete. He died in February of prostate cancer which had spread to his bones. The last time I saw him, just before Christmas when I popped round with a card, he was clearly unwell and we all knew he wasn't going to survive but still, when death comes, it's very sad. 

I've known Pete since the early 90s. My friend Nick and I lived in a flat near Altrincham. One night the pair of us were in the pub and the quiz was about to start so we decided to take part. Near us was a table of two men in their early 40s (we were early 20s), Pete and Lynds the Bins (Lyndsay, wore glasses hence the Bins nickname, smoked like a chimney, a carpet fitter). We started to chatting to them as the results were read out and realised that if we'd joined forces we'd have won the quiz. We agreed to come back the following week and so began three decades of Monday night pub quizzing- at first me, Nick, Pete and Lynds, then me, Pete, Charles and Lynds and then for a long time Pete, me, Charles and Neil. From 1993 to about 2018 we did the quiz almost every week until travelling apathy and lethargy set in, people began to drift from it and appearances became less frequent. Then Covid hit and we never quizzed again. 

For a long time in the 90s I'd get a tram from Salford, later Sale, to Timperley, call at Pete's, we'd get us into his van (he was a builder, had been since leaving school in the 1960s) and we'd go to Wythenshawe to pick up Lynds and then head to the pub to meet Nick and/ or Charles and/ or Neil. The three of us sat across the front seat of the van, the dashboard and windscreen strewn with dirty coffee mugs, cigarette and cigar packets and lighters, bits of paper from Pete measuring up jobs with his recognisable handwriting on them, bits of building equipment, receipts and other detritus from Pete's working day. The music would be whatever cassettes Pete had in the van. Often it was The Walker Brothers and the song the three of us would sing along to was this...

No Regrets

Sometimes Pete would try to get away with slipping Stars by Simply Red into the tape deck but we'd usually put a stop to that. Lynds would bring his Led Zep tape and rave about them. Kashmir was another van favourite. Pete liked The Moody Blues and saw them every time they played in Manchester, taking his wife Sandra along. Pete and Lynds were twenty years older than us. Pete's daughters, who are our age, couldn't understand why their dad hung around with us and vice versa, but a friendship is a friendship. In my house we often referred to Pete as Uncle Pete and that's how he was to me in some ways. A friend and surrogate uncle. 

Pete was a massive Manchester United fan, a season ticket holder. Back in the glory days of the 90s and 2000s we'd watch European matches together in the pub and celebrate cup wins. In more recent years we'd all moan about how bad things had got. Pete was a big England fan too and went to several Euro tournaments with his England gang- Howard and Charles and a few others. I never went on these foreign football jaunts, the Euros are always in term time. When they went to the France '98 World Cup I asked him to get me a snide shirt of an lesser fancied country from a bootleg football shirt street seller. He brought me back an unbranded, 5 euro Chile shirt that I wore at Tuesday night 5 a side for years. Pete always, without fail, left Old Trafford before the final whistle. He was often home before some people had left the ground and missed umpteen late wins (back in the days when late wins were a United speciality). We'd rib about this and he'd exhale his cigar smoke and do his Pete chuckle.

The quiz would always have a half time break and we'd all slip outside for a smoke (back in the days when we all still smoked. I haven't smoked since 9pm on 3rd June 2013, Charles and Neil both gave up before me). Pete smoked slim cigars. We started to knock around the idea that our quiz team had gone on for so long it should be turned into a film- called Quiz- a gentle/ gritty northern comedy about a pub quiz team across three decades with four friends of different ages. We knocked around jokes and ideas about who would play each of us and Pete was always very definite on this point- he would be played by Al Pacino. And in a way that's how I think of him, No Regrets by The Walker Brothers blasting in the van, a pint or two, talk about United while standing outside pubs in all weathers, Pete smoking his cigar and chuckling about being played in a film about a pub quiz team by Al Pacino. 

Thanks for everything Pete. Rest in peace mate.