Here is a ‘vintage’ Polaroid of myself and the famous Tommy A, mentioned in the previous post.  Pardon my Eighties helmet ‘do’; I have never been burdened with existential quandary: I was placed on this earth to grow hair.

I’d made a fitful search for this photo in anticipation of that previous post, but to no avail.  Then, rather like (but probably not at all like) that term meaning ‘the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late’, it turned up.

I wonder if you have noticed that I refer to persons with first name and an initial, and sometimes full first and last.  I know asking this question is like imagining that your doctor has assigned a full-time employee to sit and wonder day after day if you are alright.

The answer is that the living get an initial, the departed, full name.

John Gilbert, the ‘insulter’ chronicled in the previous post, is – unlike myself – no longer with us.  I should at my age, and in these ‘Covid’ times, be more circumspect about frivolous references to death, but frankly, if I were any more circumspect than I am, I’d start twitching and sparking like an android.