I had 4 special links with John: i) he was the one happy face on the panel when I was interviewed for a job at the Poly in 1988 (and I got it); ii) once in the job, I soon found out that John had been a student at the same college as my dad (tho' he was 30 years earlier), viz. St Mark & St John's (or MaJohn's, as it was familiarly termed); iii)  I was pleased to discover that John was also a cricket fan (and probably the only other one in the School of Languages). So when meeting around the photocopier we were ever able to enjoy lofty discussions about Ian Botham's off-swing or Viv Richard's hook; iv) Early on in my time at Brookes John kindly passed on to me a module which he had run for several years. This was 'Methodology of Foreign Language Teaching':it may sound a little dull, but it was great fun to teach. I taught it happily for about 20 years and it was still running under new management when I left! I was always grateful to John for that, as for many other things. I shall miss him greatly.