A song sung  by my old travelling companion Hugh Armstrong (March 6, 1944 to January 26, 2016) is a poignant reminder of him on what would have been his 80th birthday.

Neither of us intended to drop out. Certainly I didn’t. I was stuck at a desk in London writing rubbish, wondering what to do with the rest of my life, and I wanted to see more of the world. I had no notion of staying away.

You could never be sure what Hugh wanted because he was never sure himself. Or if he was, it might be something different the next time he thought about it. Most of the time in those days he wanted to be an actor. Even more he wanted to be a star. He could have made it, some said, if only he had held himself together long enough.

I couldn’t say. I knew him too well. It was a long time before I realised that some people, especially women, found him charismatic.  He could be loud. He could be tedious when drunk. He could be outrageous. He could be infuriating. Some people did not like him. But for those many who loved him he could be a joy to be around.

Hugh was always up for a jaunt in the days when we were at school together in stuffy old Bedford, and we realised we could go anywhere we wanted just by sticking our thumbs out. Ten years on, if we had been sensible, we would have been plugging away at our careers.  Hugh was in work and had the prospect of more, so when I told him that I planned to take a break travelling round South America, it never occurred to me that he would come. He simply announced that he would, as if I could expect nothing else.

Hugh was never sensible. That was his gift to me. I gave him my common sense, which may have kept him out of trouble sometimes but it could not stop him self-destruct.

I’m a sucker for maudlin songs, and one line from Moon River still brings me to tears because it’s just what we were. Two drifters off to see the world. We had such a time. I didn’t plug back into mainstream life for more than a decade. Hugh never did.

Joker, my soon-to-be-published book about those days, is more about me than him because for a lot of the time I was by myself, plunking away at my guitar half a world away. But good friends are close even when they are apart. I feel close to him still.

This  recording, which someone posted on YouTube, is the only one I have of him singing, which makes it deeply poignant for me. The sound quality is poor and his chord changes are erratic but once he gets going his voice shines through. I wasn’t there at the time but you get the picture. We had sessions like that in hotel rooms and around fires across South America and India.

Life is still good to me and I don’t wish myself back in those times. But I do wish Hugh was still around. To adapt slightly what he sings so beautifully: “To be with you now would be the sweetest thing, ’twould make me sing. Ah… but I may as well try to catch the wind.”