To David

There have been many fine Davids in History: King David, David Brent, David Dickinson. There have been some unfine Davids, like David Davis. There is a David in my family. There are Davids everywhere. ‘You’re never more than three metres away from a David’ as the saying goes (which if you live alone is a mildly terrifying prospect).  

I have a favourite David. A David I met on a grey, wet Tuesday at an official youth hostel in the new part of Fez (I love official youth hostels they are always old-fashioned in some peculiar way and very clean).

To David, the only other guest at the hostel, I salute you.

David of the nervous tick, glasses forever fogged in the humidity of the dorm, the spit of Ronnie Corbett, sitting in his pants eating a croissant.

Who dried his socks on a heater in the dorm and looked wistfully out of the window and said ‘oh, this drizzle’ like Alan Bennet and sighed the sigh of an Englishman who realises that rain has spoiled his grand day out.

To David, who spoke ceaselessly about the weather in Fez,

And then spoke ceaselessly about the weather in Manchester, and found the similarities between the two life-affirming.

To David, who couldn’t countenance the idea of going outside today because it was drizzling and he didn’t want to get his clothes wet and anyway he had his ‘seeing things’ day the day before.

Who warned me of the perils of open manhole covers in Tangier and made me stifle a laugh at the idea of this little man from Manchester disappearing out of sight on a busy street to be lost forever amongst the sewage.

Who had found £35 return flights from Manchester but had paid £22 for a taxi from the airport to the hostel instead of the normal £6.

To David, who said that he was surprised to find there was an older part of Fez near here and that this new town wasn’t all there was to see and so must have stumbled across one of the grandest and most venerable cities in the Islamic world by complete chance.

Who didn’t talk about Brexit because you couldn’t talk about rain when talking about WTO rules.

To David, an original and a caricature, lost in Morocco…I salute you wherever you go, and I sincerely hope it doesn’t rain.