In my last post, about the streets of Ealing where I grew up, I reminisced about annual Christmas Eve parties when we were young children, the shock loss that haunts those memories.
I don't closely recall what Christmas Eves involved when I was a teenager - often not much, I think, though there's nowt wrong with that.
Then, for my 20s and a little beyond, it was Barnes for Christmas Eve.
Pub - Midnight Mass - Basil's.
I'm sure that's where many of us will be in spirit this year.
I'm not the most convivial, never have been, but those Christmas Eves come close to an idyll of old-fashioned bonhomie I'd secretly aspire to.
Usually The Red Lion first, then The Sun Inn, then The White Hart, by the river, the one closest to St Michael's. Annual encounters with old friends, London Pride and Young's Bitter. Candlelight and pubs too full to move. Face after friendly face.
Worse for wear by the time we get to the church, checking that the toilet's in the same place as last year, keen for the Communion wine as a top-up, keen to secure a lift home.
In 2002, I wore my Clash t-shirt, 3 days after Joe Strummer's death, I remember that. I don't remember too many other specifics, year to year. Lots of us would be in an absolute state, but we loved the mass. It wasn't a duty, it was a pleasure.
Then Bas's ... the short walk through Barnes, in procession. Port, snacks - people you'd not seen for years and were glad to see. Bas asking you to remind him who so-and-so over there was, his old skill.
I've been thinking, I was Ealing all the way through school, and it really did make a big difference, that Ealing/Barnes thing. It seems ridiculous now, but it did sometimes seem, among us, there were two slightly different types of people. It wasn't until I left school that I was fully part of the other side, completely comfortable in it.
Something I wouldn't have missed though. I'll make it back to St Michael's for Midnight Mass, or maybe the Easter Day dawn service (that was a mad one) one day ... Basil won't be there.
Great Basil, who died last month, aged 85. I've seen a little this month how loved he was, and how influential he was on so many, how many lives he changed.
As a teenager, being from the other side of the tracks - those mean streets of Ealing - it was more in passing and in admiration that I knew Bas. I was probably one of those kids about whom he'd ask "remind me what his name is again" before approaching me warmly and saying "Aah, Dave, so good to see you ...", but I had my share of his kindness, humour, brilliance and hospitality in my 20s, vicariously experiencing and hanging onto his and other people's faith and sense of community, making sure I established a bridge between the happiest moments of my chequered, but devout, teens and the different, faithless, person I'd be as an adult.
Those Christmas Eves, man, I think that's when we'll all miss Basil the most.
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