I know I am not the only one to mourn the untimely death of yet another h2g2 friend, but I think I am the one of his h2g2 friends who probably knew him best, and so this will inevitably be a very personal account.

I first noticed PBS (as I used to call him here) on the Anagrammitis threads which I joined in July 2004 and he roughly a year later. He had a different account and nickname back then. I didn't see his humour and wit then, I just got a lot of his posts wrong and thought he was incredibly arrogant. I tried to avoid him if possible. Others attacked him and yikesed his posts. He was about to give up on h2g2. He then created a new account and started afresh, but at first didn't fare much better than before. In December 2006, Icy told me about James' 'Near Death Experience' (which would be included in the UnderGuide with a slightly different title). I went to James' PS and left him a message, asking how he was and expressing my concern. That's how we started talking. I soon found out that he was not arrogant at all! He never wanted to cause offence, and he rarely partook in conversations (especially journals) for fear of involuntarily upsetting somebody. His first experiences here on h2g2 had made him wary about what to say¹.

James grew up in Devon, the son of an Anglican priest (from a long line of Anglican priests). He became an architect and worked abroad for many years. From his first (divorced) marriage he had three children, who lived in England with their mother. He lived in Moroccco with his second wife, Fatima. He had a flat in Casablanca and a hut in Benshasha, a bidonville (shanty town) which he fought for². You can read up a lot about this time in his Tales of Benshasha which he wrote for the Post. Well, that's not entirely true, he had written it all down anyway, he kept notes of his moved life, and he edited some of them for publication in the Post.

Anyway, that was a lot later in our friendship. We started by writing poems. He had a very witty poem³ in the Post, and he sort of challenged me to find words that rhyme with aspidistra – and I did. From there, we went to writing acrostic poems. First in 'our' thread, then in a thread for acrostic poems in the Games room, then later for the Post. James encouraged me to participate in the Acrostics thread. He was a very good teacher. Teaching was what he did for a living after he had given up architecture. He knew a lot and was interested in everything. He had gone through very rough times, but he never lost faith.

He wrote me long emails, telling me about his life in Morocco, the ups and downs, failures and successes⁴. There was one year where things were particularly bad, so our email exchange was a bit of a lifeline for James. He often told me that it had kept him sane. Now I am sure that was exaggerated, but I knew what he meant. It was a link to some sort of 'normality' amidst all the insanity going on around him. I always read his emails very carefully, and in my replies I always tried to refer to everything he had told me. He appreciated this very much. He often complained that people nowadays don't read and write any more.

We were friends on facebook, too, and we challenged each other with jigsaw puzzles which we created ourselves. He told me that he was red-green colour blind, so afterwards I chose photos which had neither red nor green in them (or very little). I told him so, and he wrote to me:

Dear Claudia,

I look forward to the puzzle – don't worry about the colours – I just have to do them in a rather different way.

Sorry about the diet – I daren't ask what we have been eating but it hasn't had any dire effects yet. It reminds me of going to school as a small child in Devon – I sort of, grazed, like a cow or a sheep and knew all the things that were edible. What is noticeable though is how very much stronger is the taste of the wild versions of what we now cultivate – asparagus, leeks, onion, garlic, spinach and all sorts of things that go into Fatima's salads. It is interesting.

Love

James

We played a lot of scrabble. I had hardly ever played scrabble before, and never in English anyway. I lost nearly every game at first, but learned to adapt to James' way of playing. In an email from November 2007 he wrote:

Dear Claudia,

Far from being bored by your scrabbling, I have been fascinated. I have seldom met anyone who learns and changes as quickly as you do. First it was the poetry – now it is the scrabble. In a bit over a week you have changed to the point where, if I don't concentrate and think, you get the better of me all too easily.

I hope the thing I sent you is NOT too boring. If it is, I will have to re-write it completely. It is intended to be understandable to non-technical people as well as the – so called – experts.
Back to the scrabble. The statistics link is infuriating – we should complain. All the more so here as the CDMA connection is a bit slow at best so you have to sit and wait while it loads the new page. OK – it's only a few seconds but we have all become impatient as computers get ever faster.

Love

James

The 'thing' he referred to in the email above was a letter to the Coordinatrice 'Near East Foundation' which I had offered to proofread before he sent it off. James was very active in trying to save the bidonville Benshasha where his wife has some property, and he sent me everything: letters, powerpoint presentations he did to show to the officials in Morocco, the lot.

I could go on and on; we had a wonderful and (as I think) exceptional friendship. We exchanged thoughts, documents, recordings and what-have-you.

I had 'recruited' him as a writer for the Post, and he never let me down. If I needed a 'pome' (as he used to call them), I just told him and it never took long until he sent a very witty and clever one. His Seagulls poem was part of the Beeblecast the Post did to celebrate Douglas Adams' birthday that year.

James didn't know guide ml, but tried to add it to his article submissions, which messed them up terribly because he had no means of checking that it worked. I had to ask him not to bother with adding guide ml tags. He hated PCs and swore by his Apple Mac, but the incompatibility of PCs and Apples made opening files very difficult at times.

There I go again. I could go on and on and would still only ever scratch the surface of what connected us and what we shared. In my email folder I found more than 500 emails (that is, different subjects, so there are many more emails in total), and through various losses of hard drives when I still used Outlook Express, I lost a few hundred more emails from when we started emailing. That loss is very bitter, but I have my memories.

I am not the only of his friends who will miss James terribly, though. Dmitri wrote this Acrostic Poem for inclusion in this issue of the Post. I am very glad he did, it is very apt and I know James would have appreciated it.

Dear James, you are sorely missed.
Love and hugs
Claudia

James died in June 2011 from smoke inhalation following a fire.

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