A pause

A gap in the service.

As you may have heard by now, my beloved Agnes died suddenly over the weekend, aged just 35. She was the love of my life, one of the main people who pushed me to do this newsletter, the one I would talk ideas through with, and the one who provided many of them herself. She was also the cleverest, funniest, most beautiful and best of all kindest person I have ever known. The outpouring of love that’s greeted news of her death is a reminder of quite how many lives she touched without even realising it.

Our dog Henry Scampi and I are with family, and are as loved and cared for as one could hope under the circumstances. I am surrounded by wonderful friends. But still, I don’t know what I’m going to do without her. I don’t know what any of us are.

All of which is a way of saying that there isn’t going to be a newsletter today. And while I suspect the need for comfort and distraction will mean I’ll get the urge to write something stupid about trains sooner than you’d think, I’m not sure when I’ll be back to full regular service. 

Luckily, there are those friends I mentioned. The truly amazing Frankie Goodway has been working with my editor Jasper Jackson to come up with a plan, which they described, before I decided I wanted to say all that myself, as follows:

Dear readers of the Newsletter of Not Quite Everything, this week we will be taking a break. Jonn has lost suddenly the person he referred to in this newsletter, with great understatement, as his “beloved”.

From next week some people who care about Jonn, and incidentally are also writers, will be keeping the newsletter going while he takes some time.

Thanks as ever for your support. 

Jasper

I would like it on the record that my partner’s death is not the only thing this week to have made my cry.

Hug the ones you love, and thank you for reading my rubbish. I’ll be back soon.

Jonn