C. Arthur Milton

I learnt today in a roundabout way of the death of C. Arthur Milton:

"In his time, the footballer and cricketer Arthur Milton was as big a name as Alan Ball, the World Cup hero whose death preceded his by a few hours. Milton played on the wing for Arsenal and England and opened the innings for Gloucestershire and England. As such he was the last of the double internationals." - taken from his online obituary.

Normally, the death of such a has-been sporting star wouldn't mean much to me, but Mr Milton was special to me, as he was the father of Robert, my best friend in junior and secondary school. I wrote a little about this here.

I didn't exactly "finish" secondary school, I sort of "evaporated". In those days, there weren't any lessons in the summer term for the upper sixth form; pupils stayed at home and revised for their A-levels, coming into school only to sit the exams (or play cricket). My parents moved from Bristol to Cardiff before my exams had finished, and so I was a very rare sight around the halls in the summer of 73. As a result of our move and my spending the 1973/4 academic year in Israel, I lost touch quickly with almost all the people with whom I went to school.

A few days after coming home in July 1974, I took a train to Bristol and met up with Robert again. We spent a pleasant day talking and making music, and then went on our separate ways again. We next met up about a year later when Robert came to see me in London; he came loaded with a guitar and an amplifier which I had to shlap from West Hampstead tube station to my London residence. Again, we spent a weekend making music together and then went on our ways.

I suspect that I wasn't too hospitable towards him (a charge which had been levelled against me by someone else at around the same time regarding another event) or maybe we had just grown too far apart (I was quite different from my old schoolfriends by virtue of having spent that year in Israel, being dedicated to emigrating and being gung ho about my youth movement), but for whatever reason, we never got in contact again.

I have tried over the past few years looking for Robert over the Internet but have not been successful. Even today I tried and failed again, although I did find the address of the Milton family home in Bristol. I didn't remember the name of the street, although when I looked at the address on a map, the old neighbourhood came into focus, with my old house at the top of the map, our primary school in the middle and Robert's house at the bottom.

I'll send a condolence card tomorrow along with my email address and we'll see if anything transpires.