Extremely sad to hear about the sudden unexpected death of long-time friend, crony and partner in crime Tom Barry, of BorisWatch and @boriswatch fame.
Tom provided exactly the kind of hard-nosed, subject-expert and ruthless research and writing into London’s terrible mayor and supine general assembly that nobody in traditional local journalism has (bothered to do / had time for) in decades.
He did this while carrying on a day job as a telecoms expert and being a fully committed dad to two adorkable boys aged under 11*, and whilst being at the very least a good enough partner to Ish that she put up with him for the whole timeframe.
And he was only 41, and this has broken me a bit. Young people get run over or end their lives or have tragic but long-running illnesses, they don’t just die, that isn’t how it works. They don’t send pics from beer gardens the same month they die of glorious fun with the kids they love mockingly labelled “when will the torture of parenthood end?” because the fucking concept that it might is ridiculous.
This blog seems to be eulogy-focused lately. Unlike Meg Williams , as well as not being in his 80s, Tom had a great deal of internet presence – but the two share the context of having touched shedloads of lives for the better. Also, CAN EVERYONE FUCKING STOP DYING?
Two updates.
One: Tim Fenton has written a great piece on Tom’s extremely well researched ‘blogging’ (or ‘investigative journalism’, as it used to be called when paid journalists could be bothered to do it) exploits.
Two: I wrote this at the start of day on 3 November (AEST – lat night 2 November GMT) when the news was under semi-embargo from family. Even since then, I’ve had at least one thought on naval history where I thought “I’ll ask Tom about this one… fuck.”
*I fully expect to get a write-in comment from Tom’s eldest saying “actually I am 11 so I’m not under 11”, because did I mention adorkable? Hopefully I’ll be able to ask him for naval history clarifications in due course.
I mean, what the fuck, man? I’d had a bit of back and forth with Tom back in the old Blairwatch/Chicken Yoghurt days but it was him on Twitter who’d brighten my day. I could be having the shittest day possible but he’d pop up in my replies with a a gag or a riposte and I’d grin and things were a bit better. It’s an absolute fucker that my reserve never let me tell him.
Fuck. That’s shit news.
DK