Best friend from senior school just died

Not a good week. And I'm not talking about the job.

There are always management projects to run and huge local events like the Tory Conference to report. Meat and drink stuff.

But when you receive news that a close school friend has died at the tender age of 40 it's enough to stop anyone in their tracks. Even thick-skinned, brand-obsessed automatons like me.

The news is on page 14 of the Birmingham Mail today, or via this link

I met Carl Thomas when we both started at what was then Primrose Hill Comprehensive School in Kings Norton in 1979. The days of lanky body, NHS specs, big ears and ill-fitting trousers (well, me, at least.)

But Carl was different. He was calm, a great sportsman, a hard worker and - unlike most 12/13-year-old boys - was most careful and gentle about other people.

I was lucky to become his good friend. While at that school, I'd like to think we became best friends. His classwork, personal life and emerging social ethics at such a young age challenged my own views of the world.

Politics became interesting (we argued until the small hours about events like the miners' strike).

Music was suddenly more than 'TV theme tunes by James Last' (our discovery through long afternoons at his house of The Beatles' White Album from his dad's collection was a joyful revelation, Blackbirds Singing at the Break of Dawn and all that).

The company of girls became more than an awkward teenage giggle (Carl had a sister around the same age and she and her friends became our wider group of youngsters growing up).

Competitive sport became a possibility (tennis in particular - he whipped me but it was strenuous, stretching stuff on sunny weekends at the municipal courts in Cotteridge Park).

Confidence quickly came more easily (together we auditioned and won roles in school musicals Tin Pan Ali - Carl playing Ali, me Grandpa - and My Fair Lady - Carl in Colonel Pickering's role, me acting up as Henry Higgins... and Zoe Tyler of TV fame was our Eliza Doolittle!)

Cycling became an eye-opener to the wider world (together we cycled the Cotswolds, Cornwall and Wales, staying at Youth Hostels, making many other friends and at 15/16 discovering the true joys of cider, real ale and what at times we imagined and forlornly chased as love).

Sadly, after A-Levels, we grew apart when Carl fell victim to serious depression and consequent bouts of mental illness. No more detail necessary, but our friendship changed from the joys of youth to the occasional awkward walk around Cannon Hill Park, sharing a curry and lending him a little cash.

As the report says, he was regularly spotted busking in Kings Heath and Moseley and, during lucid periods in his life, recorded amateur albums and sang his own great songs for anyone who cared to listen.

But our lives parted. I'm where I am, with a job I enjoy and a wife and three boys I love dearly. The lad I always felt was my better, Carl, had bad times and was never in a state to marry or anything like it. Though slowly recovering in his late 30s, he had given his body such a battering with smoking and strong prescription drugs that, days before his 41st birthday, it just couldn't take any more.

So why have I made him the subject of today's Editor's Chair blog? Well, I'm the editor and the above has shrouded my week, and I feel my blog should reflect that: I'm unashamedly grieving in the chair where I sit. I've also had my quiet moments filled with special memories from those teenage years... and as a tribute to Carl I wanted to share a peek at those.

RIP Carl. If there's anything in all that religious stuff we used to debate, I dearly hope that one day in a few decades time I can share the odd tennis match and Beatles' song in the clouds with you somewhere.