the moss garden

For Beaker.

I’ve got this friend called Kath who I’ve known since September 1984. Ours was a momentous meeting in a year of spectacular happenings. We met at Stockport College where we were both scratching around trying to get some post O Level qualifications, whilst also launching into some happy, socially hedonistic adventures that would reverberate down the years.

Kath is a catalyst in my life, she introduced me to so many people and I introduced her to people then connections were made, between our Heaton Moor centred North Stockport collective, to the Gatley crew and their associates from Cheadle, Cheadle Hulme, Heald Green, and then via The Gatley connection we met and bonded with the Sale and Altrincham contingent. Music and good times and getting down in the great outdoors were some of the things that we shared, music specifically, as these groupings generally attended rock and sometimes reggae oriented clubs and concerts in Manchester. The connections I made via Kath still ripple in bold toned patterns throughout my life, our connection is for me a definitive statement of how life works, how people create social infrastructure and grow old together.

I’d heard of this character called Beaker, the Gatley crowd talked of him with some high regard. Kath introduced me to him at Umist, 1986, at the Saturday Rock disco there. I was instantly taken with his style and disposition.

He was wearing hiking gear, as if about to hit the hills, with solid and well walked boots, big socks, jeans, a waterproof jacket. He had long, golden hair hanging down in curtains framing an angelic face, with an easy smile that creased his gently arched brow and settled about his tall body, a smiling posture. His manner was supremely avuncular, welcoming and warm and within moments we were friends.

This look he had, the hiking gear and long hair, was no fashion statement, it was his uniform. In time, lots of kids in Manchester adopted a similar style, a fusion of outdoor wear and long hair as the baggy look grew in Madchester in the late 80s. I saw him as a pioneer in that look and vibe, a kind of stoned, shaggy, messy, proto-The Dude, and he wore it well, our Beaker, well worn like old boots as the years rolled by.

Beaker at the Beatherder festival, 2015. Photo by James Abbott-Donnelly Instagram/Twitter: @jadphotography © Duke Studios

His real name was Nigel but he was always Beaker. He was widely known in the UK festival scene as a bloke who got things done, building stages, shifting gear, managing sites, and he was equally famous for a lifelong commitment to hedonism. He was renowned as someone dedicated to his friends and in my experience, he was just, always there. Whenever there was an occasion he’d turn up, hours late but persistently, eventually, always there. I moved away from Manchester in 2000, and often on my return I’d see Beaker, here and there. Sometimes he’d come down to wherever I was and that would define the day and night, often I’d have to call a cab from his big old van, which was his home on the road.

It was the hills which defined Beaker for me, that’s how I knew him best, as a hillwalker, a climber and explorer of external and internal realms, connecting all the layers, a vagabond tramping the bounds of existence. He was a connoisseur, of landscapes, of Scottish Whiskies, exotic herbs, aromatic foods and of friendships far and wide.

Beaker went out into the hills for the last time this year, in April, he went to a place he knew and bade farewell, under an oak tree in a wild forest above Morecambe bay.

The loss of Beaker is like losing an ancient Oak, or Yew, something that feels like it should be there forever, that inevitably is forever, a part of that continuous becoming, the mantra of the tree, that process of seed and sapling, to maturity, to fruit, to seed, to sapling, the rhythm we’re all marching to.

Beaker was a holy mountain of a man, a Mount Fuji in everyone’s vista, the idea of him not being there is unthinkable, therefore like the symbolic mountain he will always be here, his passing is a physical loss but he’s everywhere, he was always everywhere and always will be, like another we lost too soon, Beaker and Kath’s dear friend John Gorman whose smile is in every sunrise.

Beaker and John Gorman in Nepal, photo by Kath Taylor.

It’s a sincere regret that, because of my idealisation of Beaker as this force of nature, I took his presence for granted and never imagined a world where he wouldn’t be around. The urgency of our time here is hardly realised in realtime, there was always a casual acceptance that I’d see him somewhere, but hindsight exposes the fragility of our soulful connections.

There was a memorial service for him at the Niamos centre in Manchester on the 29th June. It was a true celebration of his life, with music from people he loved, the people who loved him, and stories from people he loved, who loved him. Some of his poems were read out, I had no idea he was a poet even though I knew he was a poem. There was one about a Dandelion, it made me think of John Gorman’s smile.

There were so many people gathered, representing his life from primary school days to his most recent encounters. The stories were wonderful, a great body of work. He knew people from every corner, he wasn’t a snob or in any way stand offish, he would talk to anyone and everyone and he made friends all over the world this way. He didn’t stand for any bullshit, Beaker was as honest as the elements and if you were the same he was your brother for life.

I spoke to a very old friend John Hill, who told me how Beaker helped him build his house in the Cumbrian wilds, staying on site in his van for a couple of weeks while he worked on the roof. Every night Beaker would wander down to the village pub and have a few pints, chatting to the locals. John couldn’t join him most of the time as he needed sleep, as most mortals do. John told me that the villagers there know Beaker better than they know him, and John’s been living there for well over a decade, but that’s the measure of the man, he changed people, he is unforgettable.

There’s a line about The Happy Mondays, something about how some people live life on the edge and know their limits, and the Mondays didn’t know where the edge is, or what a limit was, they were oblivious. Beaker was the guy pointing out exactly where the edge is, as he’d abseiled over it and climbed, even crawled back up it many times, with those strong arms he’d carried many a weary soul back to safety. Fences and boundaries were a challenge to him, he’d always find a way back home or a way to somewhere new.

In time we forget many of the details, the parts that we don’t need, the things that remain gleam like panned gold, a shimmer of laughs, sighs, and whispers, a mention of a missed friend in the sun sparkle of dew, in the way wet leaves sag.

I was sat on the arm of my sofa, gazing absently at nothing through the window, my mind and body full of this powerful emotion for my lost friend, whose life I’d been privileged to be a small part of, who we’d celebrated with such sincere love. I picked up a guitar close to hand and strummed a chord and as the chord rang a Muntjiac deer sprang out of a bush at the far end of my garden, clumsily dancing it’s way across the lawn, then turned and disappeared into a thicket of raspberry bushes.

Thank you Beaker, hasta siempre.

Thanks to Kendal Mountain rescue for bringing our friend home.

Beaker in the mountains photo from Lex

Beautiful words for Beaker from Kath.

Lovely tribute to our friend here https://www.festivalsforall.com/article/beaker