Yesterday I heard that my friend Gordon Hodgeon had died in the early hours. He was one of the loveliest people I ever met. I wrote this appreciation of him (and his poetry) over a year ago.
In 1982 I was invited to be a visiting tutor on a weekend residential course, in Goathland, for Teesside teachers of English. Talented teachers working in their own time, because they were excited by the possibilities of what children could learn and do. It happened quite a lot in those days. One of my newly-acquired enthusiasms then was for developing writing through the retelling of myth and fable. The books that inspired me were Betty Rosen’s And none of it was nonsense, Alan Garner’s The stone book, and a remarkable piece of work by Penelope Farmer: Beginnings. Spare prose outlines of creation myths from around the world.
On one of the…
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The Great Fogginzo's Cobweb 
News of Gordon’s passing leaves me with a lump in my throat. He was such an unforgettable presence, even in his impossible frailty. Unflinching, and so kind and generous. Funny, when I woke up this morning my first thought was to write him a letter. I think I will do it anyway. That is the sort of thing he’d appreciate.
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he undoubtedly will. What a man. We’re all the richer for him xxx
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