In Memory of Phil White

A week ago, I went to Newcastle to pay respects and say goodbye to my best friend in primary school from Sunderland days, Phil White.

Phil was, in many ways, the opposite of me; outgoing, sporty, live-in-the-moment to my more cerebral approach to life. But on my arrival at Richard Avenue primary school, he was the one who made me feel immediately welcome, who made sure that the ‘soft’, slightly awkward Southern lad felt welcome. He encouraged me to stand my ground, fight my corner, try and knock down the bully who yelled ‘pooey Jewey’ at me in the playground.

Happily, he lived just round the corner from me and, before too long, we were running and cycling and yelling our way round the backstreets and private gardens of Thornhill, thick as thieves. I shook off most of the most obvious signs I’d grown up in a little bubble of gentle bohemia in a remote Cotswold valley, and held my own. My stepfather remembers me leaning out of our kitchen window, having spotted Phil in the lanes behind our house and yelling ‘Where you gannin?’ and, having learned where, turning to my mother and saying, in my poshest tones, ‘would it be alright if I went out with my friends?’. The new world and the old running together.

I relished going to his house, not least because we got to watch TV my mother would have objected strongly to my watching (Third World War with David Soul being the one I remember most vividly), and talking excitedly about it.

We played marbles in the school yard, and Phil introduced me to playing marbles with steel ball bearings (and helped me run and hide when I accidentally smashed a sink in the boys’ toilets with a giant one I’d won). We nicked hub caps off cars to use as whistles crammed between our fingers. We cycled round Mowbray park and rode down the kids who tried to steal my bike, laughing and exhilarated when we got home, hiding the bruises on our legs, earned by kicking the wannabe thieves, from our parents.

He came on holiday with us to Orkney, where this photo was taken. The goat kids on the farm where our rented caravan was parked became an object of fascination and fun. We romped round the Neolithic sites, played in the stones and footsteps of history and absorbed everything my mother told us about the place. We found a huge coil of shipping rope on the beach of South Ronaldsay, which Phil took home and kept in his room for years - it even ended up as a prop in the school production of Pirates of Penzance we appeared in - Phil the star of the show and me, as narrator, sat on the rope in a fisherman’s smock and hilarious brown moustache sat on the coil of rope.

Phil was popular, gregarious, funny, kind. He was, as I say, my best friend; a bond that formed fast and stayed fast, even when we didn’t see one another for more than twenty years. He came with us as company for me when my stepfather moved our possessions down to Herefordshire, on the day my mother’s cancer was diagnosed. We laughed our way down south, sticking our hands out of the car to catch heads of cow parsley on the last stretch. It made the transition so much easier, having that companionship.

And then life changed. I was down South. My mother died. Hormones kicked in. Another life came with it. We were out of touch until Facebook reconnected us. But neither of us forgot that formative, idyllic point of our childhoods, and never forgot our friendship. So when his partner at the time, Pam, got in touch to see if I’d be willing to come to Sunderland as a surprise for Phil’s 40th birthday, i jumped at the chance.

His reaction, when I tapped him on the shoulder at the party, was wonderful; one of the most epic double takes you could hope for. The years melted away. It was as if no time had passed. The excellent child had been replaced by an equally excellent man, and reconnection was easy and splendid.

I didn’t speak to him often in the following decade, but it didn’t matter - the bond of friendship and connection remained strong. I finally saw him again at his wedding to Marianne in 2022, postponed by Covid by two years. It was a joyous occasion, a reconfirming of friendship, a chance to introduce my girlfriend to someone who meant a great deal to me despite the long gaps in our seeing one another.

In November, I was finally concocting plans to get back up North to see him next year, away from big occasions, and just catch up quietly. And then his mum called to tell me that he’d suffered a stroke, and was likely to be taken off life support.

He leaves behind a huge legacy of loving kindness, to his son and his stepdaughters, his wife and family, and to a multitude of friends, who came out en masse to pay their respects. It is a wonderful thing to have been a part of that life, a recipient of his kindness and friendship, even at distance. I wish I had seen more of him.

Where you gannin Phil? We’ll miss you, marra.