Dec 13 2005
Burnel Penhaul
Silent companion
Complete pussycat
This picture was part of a card he made to let me know that he had won the Alternative Miss World Competition as ‘Miss Gale Force” in 1991.
We met when he was responsible for the set design for a production of Rumplestiltzkin. I was cast as Rumplestiltzkin. His set was wonderful. He let me help him paint it.
In Birmingham UK, we often found ourselves in the same nightclubs. We would dance near each other without acknowledging we knew each other. I would call for him in the small hours of the morning and sit on his bed drinking tea, reading, writing, or watching TV while he worked on some project, for hours at a time. In those days when he wasnt clubbing he looked like a young Jim Morrison .
He leant me clothes.
We rarely spoke.
His last spoken words to me were about 4am on a 1986 June morning as I left his room
Wendy: “bye“
Burnel: “Do you want to talk about it?”
Wendy: “No. I would cry” <left room then cried>
Even then the moment was a flashbulb memory for me; as if I somehow knew that I would never see him again. We wrote across the years before he died. More was said in any one letter than passed between us when together.
I miss him most during the dark long winter nights of the party season. Sometimes when I’m very sad I imagine he’s there, just there, silently working on a project. I’m glad he once was.
W Missing
Burnel Penhaul
