Remembering my Best Friend, Andy Gardiner

North Parade c1955
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While studying at Westminster Technical College, Hotel School just off Victoria Street in London I became good friends with Andy Gardiner whose parents ran a small hotel, probably one of these pictured here, in the North Parade of the front at Skegness.

Andy invited me up at some point to meet his parents and sister, he being accompanied by his then lovely French girlfriend of whom I was terribly envious.

Later, during the Easter Holidays, we were to travel to the Rhine Valley, accompanied with his pal, Whigs. NEVER..I say NEVER travel in a threesome .. it is fatal as there inevitably comes a clash when one person sides with another, leaving one out. Nevertheless, despite the occasional blowout, we had a great trip sampling German wines in the famous cellars around Rüdesheim and Mainz.

After graduation Andy went to Munich where he had obtained a job at the Hotel Bayerischerhof, one of the city's premier luxury hotels. He suggested that I go with him and I jumped at the chance, making speedy arrangements with my manager at the Golden Lion Hotel in Hunstanton, just across the Wash from Skeggy.

We spent a raucous, hard working winter together and shared a room at Frau Lehner's rooming house on the Westermühlstrasse, through the Oktoberfest and the great Fasching carnival seasons...but that is a whole other story!

I returned to my job in Hunstanton the following spring (1963). Andy got a job in Cambridge.

One day a letter arrived. It was from his mother. She wrote that one late night, after pubbing, while being driven home on a small country lane, his friend thought he saw an animal run out across the road in their open topped sportscar's path and he swerved and hit the ditch. Andy was thrown forward out of the car, across the windscreen and hit a tree, receiving injuries to his head that soon thereafter proved fatal.

His mother informed me that he had been cremated and a ceremony had taken place at home, all without my knowledge (I suppose she found my address later amongst his posessions ).

I recall being numb to the news, not being able to react to the suddenness of his 'disappearance'. I don't think I ever dealt with it other than the fact that his Cambridge girlfriend, Dixie, and I became close for a while.

A real good mate, with a dry sense of humour who sometimes could be overly sarcastic but whom I was privileged to have had in my life. Without him I would have missed some great experiences.