Tuesday 27 January 2015

...HE WAS A FRIEND OF MINE

....He was a friend of mine , he was a friend of mine...................

I am writing this on a Tuesday morning , and finding it very hard ; a week ago , last Tuesday , I was at a meeting at Velvet on Canal Street in Manchester with Mark , Sunni and Sue fine tuning the proposals for re-vamping the ground floor bar , the future wide open.............



Mark was found dead in the early hours of Saturday morning in a hotel in the center of Manchester.



Having spent all my working life , 45 years and counting , as a designer then I know that good clients , those you enjoy working with , are to be cherished . I have known and worked with Mark for the past twenty five years or so , from those early meetings at Atticus through to the opening of Velvet as a basement bar in 1996 , through the opening of the ground floor bar , the development of it as a boutique hotel and the positioning of Velvet now as pre-eminent on Canal street  , an institution in Manchester. It's fair to say that Velvet has shared my best of times , my worst of times................... Mark showed faith in us as a design practice and let me breath , and few clients let me do that.



And now he is gone ; everything else is still here - Velvet , Canal street , Sunni , Sue - but it doesn't feel the same at the moment . No more grumpy Mr Toad , no more acerbic wit , no more grudging
appreciation of effort , no more carping put-downs.................... I shall really miss you , you bastard.


























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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