It could never be said of Keith, that he did not live life to the fullest – right up to the end when, just as the pandemic began to loosen its grip, he was expecting at long last the arrival from Cuba of his much-loved partner, Carlos, on his first visit to England.  Keith may have seemed, to those who knew him only a little, a rather private person.  In one sense this was true; but beneath his quiet and humorous front, was a restless, curious, fun-loving, life-living, hugely energetic soul that was never so happy as when he was exploring the dangers, difficulties, absurdities and joys of life in distant places – especially in the company of local people.
 
Keith and I began our friendship fifty years ago as teenagers at school, bound by a common love for Japan and for smoking an illicit cigarette on summers’ evenings in the ancient Cloisters of the school, where we would leave behind the chores of study and fantasise together about anything and everything under the sun.  Our paths separated after University into different parts of the globe and we re-connected only a couple of years ago.  In those last two years we corresponded a lot and exchanged between ourselves a whole array of stories and laughs and experiences from our respective lives, without any restraint, almost as if we still were still at school, walking and talking across the college Water Meads together.  It was then that I learnt of the marvellous – almost preposterous – fun-loving richness of Keith’s life and adventures wherever he went: in West Africa, in Japan, in Russia, in Egypt, Ireland, Morocco, Thailand, Iraq, Cuba … in virtually any corner of the known world.  He was, of course, a master of the language everywhere he went, and soon was master of the local ways, too – observing, noticing, sometimes skteching and drawing, yet always entering fearlessly and sympathetically into the culture he found himself in.  He had a sharp eye and generous heart – a rare and precious combination.
 
Dear Keith, you were a kaleidoscopic correspondent and a very dear friend – so inwardly rich and colourful that it will never be possible to forget you.  We were both so looking forward to that dinner in Winchester – the first reunion in half a century for us – in which we could once again talk the sun down the sky as we did in the cloisters at school.  But it was not to be.  You left us behind on yet another mysterious journey to a richer and newer world.  Perhaps, in another fifty years we can re-connect once again in some other, for now, unimaginable place. 
 
Keep safe in the meantime.
 
Nigel McG.