As you may have guessed from last week's string of curiously uptopical posts — posts which, you might even have suspected, had all been written in one go then timed to appear throughout the week — we spent last week on holiday.
One of the things that happened while we were away and which we — actually let's drop the third person rubbish for a moment — I wanted to write about but couldn't quite figure out how to tackle was the death of music journalist Steven Wells, who passed away on Tuesday. 'Passed away' isn't the sort of phrase that feels appropriate to describe Swells' death — his writing style was loud and shouty — but on the two occasions I met him, and in the few phonecalls I had with him, he was unassuming and warm and generally the sort of person I find it incredibly hard to talk to because I feel that at any point I am about to say something massively stupid in front of someone massively unstupid. I guess on reflection the point here is that while he had every right to be Swells wasn't, by all accounts, the sort of person who'd have judged my poor vocabulary or inability to properly articulate what I wanted to say.
Basically it was just exciting to talk to someone who was charismatic in a way journalists — most popstars — simply aren't.
Two proper obits worth your attention: