How are you all? - In the name of Thiago - Day 91

Today has been all about catching up with old chums. I am lucky in that there are many of the blighters and they’ve all played a part in some of the wackier stories that may one day find their way into my memoirs. Well, you have to aim high!

Glyn Chapman – My friendship with Glyn goes back to my film-making days and while it’s fair to say that it’s a lot more casual these days, the fact that it has at least survived where many others from hat time fell by the wayside is testament to the chap. Those days didn’t end well for me and many ties were cut but Glyn shines through.

Glyn has recently discovered the ‘joy’ of housework which amusingly seems to mildly irritate his wife Janine, (who’s also fab by the way). This has got me thinking about the potential for a future blog around the subject of home working chaps from a female perspective called ‘please can you just fuck off!’

Glyn also owns a Joy Division oven glove, which I think is utterly fucking magnificent. At the end of our conversation, we realised that he owed me a dessert dish and I owed him a melodica. We’ve called it quits for now!

Mike Skues – Mike and I worked at Ladbrokes together in Hampden Park, Eastbourne in the late 1990s. Mike is a very thoughtful sort of fellow and it’s a mystery to me why he’s wanted to stay in touch with me all these years. Mike is a Brighton fan, has been for years. He’s also a sociology teacher at a sixth form college in East Riding, (don't call it Humberside) where he now resides and is a lover of independent travel.

I also learnt today that he attended Seaford Head which I think was once Seaford Community College. I mention this only because I recollected during my call with him that I acquired a gong, which had Seaford Community College engraved on it on a night on the smash over that way once. To this day, I genuinely have no idea how I managed to half inch it let alone get it back to my parents'  home, though I do recall months later another old mate Nigel French, insisting on its return. I think the school was Nigel’s alma mater.

Nick

Nick Thisleton – Nick, like me is a man of Sussex, albeit only just as he almost squeezes into Surrey at East Grinstead. I met Nick when he lived in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Our wives are both Brazilian and we are both men of Sussex but met in Staffordshire – what are the chances? Nick is a top man, one of those blokes that seems to be unrelentingly positive.

He’s not always had it easy, far from it. But he lifts the mood in a room and when things are looking a bit iffy, he’s the sort of bloke you’d want in your corner. He likes West Ham and Scotland especially darts player Gary Anderson.

Friedrich Loibner (Fritzy baby) – Fritz (above) is the father of another friend of mine Gernot, who I also spoke to today. I met this remarkable Austrian family when I briefly taught at Gernot’s school in 2002, shortly before I moved to Russia with a mad woman who threw my clothes out of the 23^rd floor of her Moscow flat.

Fritz was made the head of Mittelschule Eduard Staudinger in Leibnitz, a small sleepy town down on the Slovenian border, on Wednesday 1 April. I am assured by Gernot that it wasn’t a practical joke, despite the fact that Austria is also in lockdown and the school is closed. He’s worked there for 33 years and retires in August. Don't let the power go to your head Fritzy!

He is the only person I know that may end up being head of a school without any pupils actually attending in his time there. I think he’s thoroughly deserving of a mention in today’s blog despite the fact that I didn’t actually speak to him today!

He started at the school the year his son and two daughters were born. Gernot and sisters Jasi and Mona are simply knows as Die Drillinge (the triplets) as they were famous in their little village Neutillmitsch back then. Maybe they still are now – that’s another call I’ll have to make…

Lastly Oliver. Oliver, Oliver, Oliver. Everyone needs an Oliver. Hugely entertaining and capable of dreadful acts of skulduggery - I love him. And of course as you should all know by now, he is the designer of the ‘In the name of Thiago’ logo. This is the great man pictured with girlfriend Katie on the foot of the Sussex Downs last week in Plumpton looking very happy with life. Marvellous scenes!

And this is a Victorian Sponge Cake that Angelica and Elisa have just finished baking. Life is good!

Before I sign off on this bumper edition of ‘In the name of Thiago’ please don’t forget folks why I’m doing this. I’m trying to raise £10,000 for University Hospital Stoke and Birmingham Children’s Hospital. Please help me if you can. I need to raise another £4,100.