We don't know, at the time, which events in life will stand out like a beacon across the years. Sometimes it is the simplest and silliest of things that become a part of our personal treasure chest. Until October 1967 I had grown up in a provincial northern town, Halifax, in what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire. Life was a challenge, both intellectually and personally. Intellectually, because I had become a born again pentecostal believer some years earlier and was now having doubts about the validity of that. I was about to take that particular strand into a whole new dimension as I embarked upon my degree course in Theology at Kings College, London. Personally, because less than a year earlier, I had said goodbye to my parents and brothers, Richard and Mark, as they emigrated to New Zealand on one of the last of the assisted passage schemes, for the princely sum of £10.
That day I was the best man at my older brother's wedding (Paul Rayner) and went straight from the reception to the train station, bound for London. I was not, at that time, comfortable with London and, although outspoken, actually quite terrified inside. Perhaps I should have been called Hornblower!
My life changed forever, that day. I never again lived in Halifax. It was the end of childhood, suddenly and irrevocably.
Like the curtain rising on a new act in a play I entered New College, Theological College and Hall of Residence, that evening not knowing what lay before me. Hearing the commotion, the student next door came out and introduced himself, Paul Hillier. He, too, was just starting out, but in a very different field. He was a singer at the Guildhall School of Music. He had milk, a precious commodity for a student and made me a very welcome cuppa.
I don't know who else I met that night. In the days that followed there were many others and we became quite a notorious gang. But that night was special. It was a rite of passage night. There could have been no one finer to share it with. Paul was always so unassuming, relaxed and yet passionate in an absorbing way about whatever he did. I think he saw life as like a garden full of beautiful things just waiting to be plucked. For me, also a man of passion, there is always an issue. For Paul, there is passion without either effort or issue. That's why he is so suited to music.
Inevitably, our destinies took us in different directions. I suppose I last saw him around 1970, maybe even 1969, when I moved out of New College. A few years ago, I started looking for old friends on the internet, and had some remarkable finds. At that time Paul was nowhere to be found. Now, I have a very peculiar disability. I forget people's names. I once, famously, forgot my French teacher's name for 3 days and she had been teaching me for four years. This disability is compounded by the fact that many of these old friends had nicknames, so we never used their real names anyway. Paul was called Will Thatcher (long before there was another famous Thatcher!) because of his West Country twang and homliness. This was further developed when 2 of us found a gravestone in Winchester Cathedral to one Will Thatcher who died of drinking hot toddy.
Anyway, I digress. My search for long lost friends continued today when I quite accidentally spotted the credits in a listing for a BBC TV programme about the notorious pirate, Blackbeard. Among the contributors/actors is one James Hillier. Ahh! said I. That's his name. Paul Hillier. From that to a search engine to Paul's web site was then quite simple. In fact there is a second one here.
Paul, it turns out, is not only famous and successful. He is at the very top of his profession with something like 80 recordings and associations all over the world. Moreover, he must be one of the few children of the 60s who still looks much the same, even down to the hair!
I was so pleased that Paul had fulfilled the potential that was always so clearly there from the outset and I can see in his pictures that he hasn't changed at all in his nature. I am proud to say that for me he was and I hope always will be, quite simply, my friend.
Pierre
Tags: Paul Hillier Halifax pentecostal theology Kings College London New Zealand assisted passage Hornblower New College Guildhall School of Music rite of passage singer passion music Winchester Will Thatcher Blackbeard friend
