Kevin’s been part of my daily life for a long time. At first we just communicated on the TrekBBS since I joined in 2005, but after a while we started messaging and it became a daily routine, like eating. We just kept a running commentary going for 13 years. In the face of a lifetime of limited physical options Kevin became an adventurer of the online and broadcast worlds, cinema and books. From all of this adventuring he would share his thoughts and critiques on his blog Bullshit from a Geek, as well as all the different social media platforms he frequented. He could also geek at expert level, although to be honest he could have been telling me a load of it and I wouldn’t know the difference. Fri 24 Aug Me: … I’m waiting for a show where if someone is murdered they take over the body of the murderer. Endless fun. K: Submit it to Netflix. Me: Say you get arrested, tried and sent to prison. Being in prison is obv better than being dead but if you get tired of it you just piss off a prison guard enough to kill you and hey presto you’re a prison guard. I’ll run up a draft and send it off. K: Dexter but you goad people into murdering you. K: Or Quantum Leap with murder. Me: It’s a winner. K: Your elevator pitch right there. Once when he lived in Hull we were chatting as usual and he suddenly started texting gibberish. I told him to put his O2 on which he did. He then says “ha ha my brain without oxygen: my brain WITH oxygen”. Twit. 17 May Me: Watched second ep of LiS. So the two left in the cave. Is that them toast? K: of course not. K: What sort of monster would leave a chicken to die? He optimistically got a spinning machine and put me to shame by actually using it. Briefly. He once cycled for 5 minutes and then took the rest of the day to recover. The times we played Portal II Co-op (he was P-body I was Atlas) when I was supposed to be working in the office. He was in Hull and I was in Edinburgh. Once after I managed to get him killed spectacularly, was the first time I realised that the computers had an audio link because he told me to stop laughing. He had this walking stick thing that he could turn into a seat. He often went for rambles round his neighbourhood. Once when he was taking a breather, a bunch of kids went charging past him on some adventure. One of them stopped and asked “why are you blue, mister?” So he told a group of enthralled urchins why he was blue. They then affirmed his faith in humanity by asking if they could help him. Him going to see Prometheus when it came out and texting “stupidtastic” to me halfway through the film. Recently he’s been birdwatching in the back garden at Pool. Him: Hey Attenborough, what are those birds singing in the back garden? Me: do you have a picture? a recording? Him: not that organised. So I told him what would likely be singing in December. Then he got right into it; taking pictures and misidentifying birds. It was fun and he enjoyed learning about something new, as always. Most of all we shared our delight in SF and F. From very early on, Kevin managed to break my aversion to reading fantasy by pointing me towards Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. From then it was a short leap to Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant and thence to the world of fantasy. I am now totally hooked, so I ended up recommending stuff to him. Mon 17 Sep K: Well We Happy Few is short. Me: Game? K: yep. Started it. You’re sat at a machine redacting articles. You have a flash of memory and go to take a drug called Joy. It offers ‘press Y to take or X to keep remembering’. I pressed Y and the credits rolled. We met twice, once when he made the effort to come to garden party at ours. He got chucked off the train at Dunbar due to some operational bullshit, so I drove from Fife to pick him up. It was a fair distance and I kept getting plaintive “are you nearly there yet” texts as I floored it along the motorway. Anyway he enjoyed the trip and caught up with another friend in Edinburgh the next day. I will forever regret not making the effort to go to his wedding with Kathy. We also met in Paris for the End of the World. Kathy was there too and how they managed to see so much of the city when all the public transport was so disability unfriendly is a testament to their determination. Sat 4 Aug K: It’s official. New Picard show on the way. Me: New Picard? Not Young Picard when he had hair and was an eager young deck officer? K: nope, Patrick Stewart starring. Me: How exciting? Retired Starfleet captain travelling to new worlds to solve mysteries. K: Possibly. Picard and Beverley on Honeymoon. Me: Eeewwwwww I still keep expecting the phone to ping the way it has done every day for so long, bearing today’s rant, joke, observation or general Kevin-ness.