Not everyone knows the basic facts of Max's life: In brief:
Max was born on 4 October 1982, son to Victoria and Seamus, and brother to Rachel.
Max grew up in Queen’s Park, a district near Kilburn in north-west London which is set around the park from which it takes its name. He went to the local primary school in Salusbury Road and then on to Hampstead School, a local comprehensive.
During those years Max made a great many good friends, and spent a lot of time in Queen’s Park playing football with them. As they got older many evenings were spent in ‘the Irish’ - it was originally the local Irish Centre and later became a bar. Owen Cutts, Dash Lilley, Louis Russell, and Isaac Warshal were particularly close, and the five of them went on their gap year travels together.
In his teens Max had a long and important relationship with Rosy Rowlands, who also lived near the park and went to Hampstead School. They decided to split up when they went to University, but they still remained close and were an important part of each other’s history.
The four boys were pall-bearers at Max’s funeral, and they and Rosy spoke.
After his gap year Max went to Newcastle University, where he made some very good friends - see the contributions to the blog. At the funeral Eddie Clark and James Hutchinson were pall-bearers, and Jo Lewin and Eddie spoke.
Part of Max’s course was a year abroad in Spain. He enjoyed Spanish and was becoming a fluent Spanish speaker. He chose to go to Cadiz - where in a short time he made more good friends. And it was there on 26 February that he had the accident that ended his life. He was twenty-three years old.
All three of Max’s immediate family spoke at his funeral. This is what I said:
Max was always fundamentally optimistic and cheery. As a toddler he’d leap on to his tricycle at the gate on our corner of the park and hurtle down the slope with a grin on his face and no fear whatsoever. The first time he was taken swimming at the Jubilee he looked in the pool, saw all these children swimming, thought that looks easy, I can do that, I don’t need inflatable arm-bands, and leaped straight in. Luckily Louis’s mum was in the water and fished him out. He was for once a bit shocked.
Max did have doubts and worries, like everyone else, but I felt that his natural ebullience would always win through in the end.
He could be wilful, and we had some struggles bringing him up, but they’d become things of the past. He’d been getting much better organized, though he did still miss the plane last time he went back to Cadiz. Of course, he’d always managed to organize footy and parties. And in October he organized a long weekend for us in Cadiz for Victoria’s birthday - a pleasant modest room near the middle of Cadiz, a meal in Cadiz’s best restaurant, and an evening in a backstreet flamenco bar (where he briefly fell in love with the youngest dancer). He was starting to get on top of things. But we did think it a bit rich for him of all people to complain about the manana attitude of the Gaditanos.
When we went back to collect his things it was heart-wrenching to find on his table in the flat his latest cheerful little To Do list from the day before he died, with friends to email, a professor to see, people to ask about doing English teaching and sports coaching.
I was always pleased that he enjoyed football, did well at it, organised teams and events, took a coaching course, and so on. But I very rarely saw him play. I regret that now. But the football was very much his thing, we left him to it, there'd always be plenty of time for us to get around to watching a match some other day.
From when he was quite young I’d found that he could be very sensible about people. In recent years I had sometimes asked his advice about how to deal with someone, and taken it. And he could be very sensible about practical things too, though not always able to take his own advice. Even so, for us, it’s both surprising and very moving to read in a letter from a Newcastle friend that ‘I know that from now on, that whenever I’m tempted to do something daft, I’ll think about the advice he’d have given me.’
We knew Max was a friendly young man with people skills at least as good as his ball skills. He’d always been prepared to talk to grown-ups when another boy might have averted his eyes as a parent passed by. And we realised he knew a lot of people, but we hadn’t grasped just how many. Though we did joke about how when we walked with him around Newcastle or Cadiz he’d be greeted by a friend every two or three streets or so - and in Cadiz that was after he’d been there less than two months, and the friends included Gaditanos. We knew he was basically good-hearted, but we had no idea how greatly he was liked and respected - the tributes in the blog, and all the people here, have quite overwhelmed us. It’s not that we didn’t know him, it’s that we didn’t realise just how much there was of the him we did know.
Cadiz is such a nice place, Max liked it there, he was doing well, getting himself sorted out, making plans for his future. Then this.
It will be both painful and a consolation for us to see the other boys and Rosy continuing, growing older and starting families of their own. We know that we and they will never forget Max.
Seamus
