Let’s be brutally honest: Andy Batley, who finally shuffled off this mortal coil in 2020 (a year which, frankly, couldn’t be blamed for anything), lived by one simple, magnificent, and utterly selfish mantra: Andy lived.
In an age of artisanal kale and ‘mindful communication’, Andy was a beautiful, defiantly analogue machine. He was engineered for efficiency: find a pub, sit down, and keep the fluids flowing. His four-pillar liquid diet Beer, Gin Tonic, Vodka Tonic and Merlot was a perfect algebraic equation designed to achieve maximum convivial warmth with minimum fussy ordering. And the Camel? In a world of vapes and ‘wellness’, the man smoked like a 1970s transatlantic flight captain, just to remind the rest of us what freedom smelt like.
Andy was like a perfectly built, sound-proof safe. Quiet, hard to crack, and occasionally, when the tumblers finally aligned, he’d spit out some genuine gold. You’d be discussing the existential crisis of being alive, and he’d drop a line so funny or so wise that you felt obliged to buy him the next drink, which was exactly his strategy. He also adored winding people up. It was his sport, his yoga, his corporate retreat; the simple pleasure of watching someone tie themselves in knots over an entirely baseless statement.
Our marriage, bless it, was a masterpiece of mature, low-effort conflict resolution. While other couples were ‘processing their feelings’ and hiring mediators, we had the Andy System. If we had a row (which meant I’d gone silent and was generating my own mute atmosphere of passive aggression), he’d simply text: “Still miserable?” That was it. No long-winded apology, no deep dive into emotional baggage. Just three words that cut through the nonsense and usually resulted in a laugh. The conflict simply vaporized, like steam off a perfect vodka tonic.
The man had the most confusing internal jukebox ever built. You’d find him humming some forgotten, three-chord punk anthem under his breath, only for him to suddenly grab me and aggressively twirl me around the kitchen to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” The sheer, glorious absurdity of it sums him up. He was baffling, brilliantly so. Only our American pal Lunetta, and her equally bonkers daughter Portia who he affectionately and repeatedly called “mad women” ever managed to truly short-circuit him into helpless laughter.
His dedication to his betting company strategies was impressive, though baffling. He’d disappear into the midnight hours, diligently calculating exactly how the public could be separated from their hard-earned money. He was the brilliant, quiet architect of other people’s bad luck. Meanwhile, I’d occasionally have to deploy the “Childcare Ploy,” a tactical retreat necessary when one’s partner has become structurally bonded to the local bar stool and required a time-out from the pub atmosphere.
Andy didn’t “pass away.” He didn’t “transition.” He merely ran out of petrol in 2020. But the thing is, he absolutely nailed the “lived” part, right to the end. He believed in eternity, which is probably a good thing, because Heaven is now going to need to drastically upgrade its supply of Merlot and locate a very decent, quiet, well-stocked bar. And I know he’s there now, nursing a Camel, spitting out wisdom, and probably winding up Saint Peter.
What a spectacular, silly, and slightly dangerous sod he was.
#AndyBatley #PubLife #DevelopmentDiplomacy #C4D #MadWomen #EltonClarksonTribute #StillMiserable
