By Rick Allen - December 22, 2004
Before long it led to wine dinners with our wives, Brenda and Dael, and our good friend Alan Parkhouse. They revolved around good food, spectacular wine and even more spectacular hangovers.
As I write I have photos on the wall of the very first wine dinner at our place. There, in a line, are the empty bottles, with we three guys posing proudly, if unsteadily, behind them. For the record they were a 1990 Pol Roger chardonnay, a 1992 Vat 47 chardonnay, a Kim Crawford chardonnay (can't make out the year), two bottles of 1970 Eileen Hardy shiraz, a 1978 Grange, a 1972 Chateau Reynella vintage port, a 1990 Petaluma riesling and a 1996 De Bortoli Noble One sticky.
If I'm not mistaken - and Brenda makes sure that I'm not - I was crashed out naked on our bed when our guests left. Subsequent dinners were more disciplined, thank heavens.
When it was Col's turn to host he would spend all afternoon in the kitchen, cooking something over and above the call of duty. Not just the main, mind you. No, it would invariably be three courses with wines to match. Neil Perry eat your heart out. It won't surprise you to know that the food was very, very good.
His generosity with wine, like food, knew no limits. He would tirelessly encourage me to give pinot noir a go, a wine I rated as "lolly water". But he would persevere, often giving me some of his finest bottles to help educate my sorry palate. Today pinot - or Burgundy, as it's known in France - is among my very favourites.
Like me, he loved collecting wine and viewed budgetary constraints as a challenge rather than an obstacle. We'd work together to get around any wine-buying moratorium our wives might invoke as they battled with the monthly bills. We were within the letter of the moratorium, if not the spirit. But that was good enough for us.
It would result in farcical situations where Col would owe me for four bottles of, say, Bowen Estate cabernet, but I had still to pay him for four Petaluma riesling we'd bought eight weeks earlier. Mind you, the Petaluma were on special at 13 to the dozen, so that had to be taken into account when considering the single bottle price. And don't forget Col had slipped me a bottle of Curly Flat pinot to try. Did he want to take that into account now or should I pay later? Okay, so, we'll do a straight swap, the riesling for the cabernet, but how much do I owe after that? Where was Stephen Hawking when we needed him?
Col was a man of great passion - wine, John Coltrane, horse racing, Tottenham Hotspur - and animals. You only had to hear him talk of his cats to feel the affection. He would come to my place for a Sunday barbecue and spend hours stroking Zoe, my high-strung, demanding, drooling Staffordshire bull terrier as she dribbled on his leg in anticipation of a potato chip being slipped under the table. He never tired of her, and yes, he would always find another chip, and another, and another.
It was only in recent years that we learned we were both fans of Tottenham Hotspur. As I didn't have pay-TV for years, I was a fan from a distance, checking the scores in the paper each week. Colin, on the other hand, was a "tragic" although he didn't like to admit it.
He would get up at 1am, 2am, 3am, whatever the time to watch Spurs live. The next day I would get an email explaining where the manager's tactics were wrong, how some kid in reserved was killing them and, as a natural left-footer with a thumping shot, he was exactly what was needed on the left to give our team more sting in attack.
I laughed at how such a balanced, intelligent person could have such a masochistic streak to get up in the middle of the night to watch Spurs crash to another ignominious defeat. But before long, after I had finally got pay TV, he had managed to do the impossible and talk me into getting up too. Now, with Colin gone, it's my season's mission to watch them live, regardless of the time, the weather, or whatever plans I have the next day. I put it down to a special time I've put aside for a man who touched me closely.
So here we are now, a few weeks after he's gone and I don' find myself in tears anymore when I walk Zoe (mind you, Zoe can do that to me in her own right) but I still experience that very hollow feeling of loss, that instant when I think I should send him an email, or give him a call, and then I realise he's not here anymore.
He's still thinking of me though. Since he's been gone Spurs have won four on the trot, their best form since 1995, and are starting to look a decent team at last. Wherever he is, he's working some magic.
I've met many good men in my life, but never a better one.
He was my best mate and I miss him.
Rick
