Matt Thompson - Guitars, Gambling and a Good Egg

As I mentioned in my last post, my good friend Matt Thompson is leaving these shores to embark on a new adventure in lovely ol' Ottowa on July 14th. Here are a few paragraphs about Matt, feel free to comment or leave some of your own memories (sorry Matt, it wasn't meant to sound like an obituary)

Heytesbury
Perhaps my most abiding memory of Matt would be our silly mission to Heytesbury. Following another fun night out in Bath one Saturday evening in 2004, Matt and I decided that it was far too early to go home, and to be honest, Brian and Gareth looked like they wanted to spend some quality time together), we thought it might be a good idea to jump on a train and head to London. So, off to the station we went, no trains to Londinium. At this point, we decided we'd go to Southampton for some reason, again, there were no trains, but we did meet a 6"8 giant of a man, wearing army surplus gear, hair like Heathcliff and extremely piercing blue eyes (imagine the bad guy from No Country for Old Men with a smile...and no oxygen tank), he was waiting for a friend, we decided to split, just in case his mate Fred West turned up.

Our next stupid decision was to try and thumb a lift down to Southampton (I think we were heading to see my friend Dan, who it turned out was away that weekend), so off we headed down Great Pulteney Street. As we approached The Holborne Museum, we saw several police dog vans and about 10 officers storming the museum (it was also puring with rain at this point) "Hmm, how strange" we thought, then wandered up the road onto the A36. After a mile or so
we were picked up by 3 lads in a small car, who were going as far as Warminster. They seemed nice enough and dropped us off in a layby near Warminster; they even offered to put us up for the night, but we declined and carried on walking to Southampton until we realised how bloody stupid we were being.

This epiphany occurred in the lovely village of Heytesbury (you can have a look at how far we walked here). It was about 3.00 in the morning by this point (we had left bath about 11.30) and Heytesbury had one phone box, which happened to be next to a particularly spooky graveyard, quite apt when you consider our crepuscular activities.

We had one 10p between us so had to choose our one phone call carefully. We decided that we would phone Matt's then-girlfriend Liz, who was 'definitely' staying with her friend in Southampton . We rang Matt's girlfriend's fiends, woke up her parents and were told to bugger off. Darn. Fear not, back then, there was a freephone number for Rainbow taxis, I phoned them and eventually managed to persuade them to take us to bath, £45 later we were both safely tucked into our beds wondering what the hell we had done.

Fruit machines
I hadn't really touched fruit machines before meeting Matt, less than a year later, i was ridiculously addicted to the Doctor Who machine in the Grapes (which was a great fruity, despite not having watches as prizes), constantly swapping fivers for "five ones please, Chris". I managed to beat my terrible affliction but bore the financial brunt for much of the following year.

• His guaranteed attendance in the Grapes the second his monthly 'pay' arrived from the Bank of Winchester
• His guitar and banjo wizardry
• His no nonsense style on the football field
• His Cornish pasty feet
• Taking me on some great nights out in Winchester
• Hearing his brother's immortal words "Look, as long as you've worked enough to have £50 in your pocket to sit in the pub all day Saturday, you're doing all right"
• *note this was in 1995
• Being the only person I've phoned the police and hospitals about following his disappearance on the 'Lost Weekend'.
• Never having a dull moment in his company
• His general 'good eggness'

Wednesday night

He came round about 5 ish and we popped to the pub about 7.30 for a couple of hours, think he left about 10, then came back to ask where the nearest petrol station was, then came back 10 mins later because he'd forgotten his sunglasses. I'm presuming he got home Ok.

Matt may still make an appearance in Amsterdam, though. I suggested him setting a difficult target that if reached, would allow him to join us all. This started off being "Get a Full Time Job within 2 weeks of your arrival", but soon degenerated into ''Get an interview", then "Apply for a job", then "write a CV", then "Read a job advert" and finally, just say "job". So fingers crossed, we'll see him on the Arena Hotel on August 22nd..