Niall and Newhaven

I recall looking at Niall across a busy pub lounge, as he was sitting alone and flicking through The Sunday Times. He was a postdoc researcher who generally worked on a laboratory bench near me, in his mid-twenties, and I thought he looked rather lonely that afternoon, but I also considered that perhaps he was quite happily at peace in his solitude. I didn’t disturb him to say hello.

I then worked away from base for a few weeks and on the next occasion when he entered my mind sufficiently for me to enquire how he was, I was told that he had died.

“What?”

“He killed himself with a concoction of chemicals.”

“What?"

“Yes, and not done very well. He survived a few days in hospital, but not long.”

And so every now and then I recall the sight of Niall, sitting alone at Sunday lunch in a pub, flicking through his Sunday Times, with a plate of food in front of him, and bearing a head, it seems, so full of trouble.

And I was prompted to think of this memory from 43 years ago again today, when I noticed a man sitting alone in a pub in Newhaven, flicking through his Sunday Times with a plate of lunch in front of him.

Fortunately the man, whose reflection I noticed in the mirror, was me. But I spent quite a while thinking sadly of Niall, while looking out across a flat grey sea.