I decided to write this stream of consciousness/gravy because of an evening spent in various pubs in London in January, 2009, with about forty or so friends, most of whom I met between 1969 and 1975, and most of whom were connected in one way or another with University College London. The occasion was the tenth anniversary of the death of Slim Rhodes (Blaise Alastair Rhodes 1950-1999).
In a fit of mis-placed nostalgia (“Waiter! Have I left a fit of nostalgia here somewhere?”) I committed myself to compiling a collection of our photographs. This was to be based on our combined set of albums and old shoe-boxes of photographs, with some added commentary on the huge number of people who knew or just met Slim between 1968 and 1999. He was a sort of over-weight pole around which so many others found their orbit.
The collection of photographs are on a private Yahoo site, called somewhat unsurprisingly, Slimslist. Anyone who wants to see them will have to ask me, until the fifty or so current members of the Slimslist group decide that all the photos and tales of debauchery and lay-aboutness are fit to release on an unsuspecting public. They are photos of us having fun (well, most of the time); this is no sombre memorial or obituary (in fact it is downright irreverent in all the right places) but simply an opportunity to put things down on record on the Internet.
Though the photos and stories are not posted here at the moment, I am going to post a list of all the people I can remember who met him or knew him. That way, anyone not on the original Slimslist who is absent-mindedly Googling the night away might chance upon a name s/he recognises, and can make contact if interested; others could come up with yet more names of people who were around at the time.
Next: the great list.
