Josh Phillips

No Antarctica stories quite yet, I’m afraid. When I got back to Ushuaia, it

was to the truly dreadful news that the most wonderful boy in my school, Josh

Phillips, had died in a bike

accident in Manchester. He collided with a pedestrian, apparently, which

is something I almost do every day, given pedestrian behavior in Manhattan.

I wrote a little note which is going to his funeral

tomorrow: "To Josh, Whose head was always in the clouds," it said.

He was the kindest guy in the world, and there is no way at all to make sense

of a world where Josh – Josh of the twinkling eyes and the patchwork coat

and the 12-year-old daughter, for chrissakes – gets picked off

while the rest of us are enjoying penguins and Malbecs. I’m not going to be

at the funeral, but I am going to work out how to make a donation in Josh’s

memory to Treesponsibility,

and it would be great if you did too. So lots of love from NYC to Rachel and

Poppy and everybody who Josh touched – which is a lot of people –

and if any of you ever find yourselves here, I’ll try to show you some of the

love and hospitality which was second nature to Josh, and maybe fit in some

backgammon, too, and long whisky-fueled talks into the night about Feyerabend

or entropy. But Josh was unique and the world won’t ever be the same without

him.