Indelible: Paddy Harper blazed a trail through the news and our hearts. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy
Monday.
It is 9am and time for the meeting of the Mail & Guardian section heads.
We hardened survivors of the mayhem that has blitzed the media landscape in South Africa are preparing for another week of chasing the news in our turbulent country.
There is the ravenous online beast to be fed and that hardy perennial, the print edition, needs to be planned.
But there is one of those little blocks missing from the Google meeting screen. The name Paddy Harper is not there, and all of us know that somehow we have to come to terms with the void that his sudden death has left.
Paddy was an old-school print journalist with vast experience and a list of contacts, dating back to his activist days, that was the envy of many in the journalism world, particularly the politics reporters.
He knew about deadlines, front-page leads and the joy of the after-work drink when the paper had been put to bed. Usually with his byline on the story that led the paper.
But despite his years, Paddy knew that “digital first” was not just an empty phrase bandied about by desperate media bosses, and his output of daily stories for the online platform was exceptional.
He was always eager to learn, but it was usually the rest of us who learnt from him.
His knowledge, experience and wisdom often made him the voice of reason in the sometimes heated debates among the M&G journalists. Of course, he would deny this.
And then there was his column… The wit and wisdom just seemed to flow out of him like Guinness from the tap in an Irish bar.
I feel ridiculous having my words occupy the space that he owned for so many years.
He was an extraordinary journalist, but I think Paddy was so loved because he was just such a great human being.
Paddy was “a genuine guy”, says M&G photographer Delwyn Verasamy, who spent many hours traversing the KwaZulu-Natal North and South Coasts on assignment with him.
They shared a love of fishing and Paddy would always tell him to “bring the rods”. Of course they never found time to fish because the dedicated newshound was too busy chasing the story.
Paddy and I grew up in Durban and we shared a love of the weed that has always been so readily available in the province.
Paddy’s enjoyment of the herbal remedy in all its forms, and the twinkle in his eyes that revealed his Irish roots, often made me regret giving up the marijuana habit. Maybe if I started again I could be more like Paddy.
His passing has once again made me think of the randomness and unfairness of death. The good ones always go too soon.
During the Christmas period a friend who I have known for 30 years was killed in a car accident while travelling down to Durban. An out-of-control car came flying across from the opposite lane and crashed onto the roof of her car on the driver’s side. One second either way and she would still be alive.
I just can’t stop thinking that I didn’t make enough time to enjoy her company while she was alive. And the same goes for Paddy.
We spoke almost every working day but, because he was in Durban, there was never the opportunity to just be two old geezers chewing the fat. Or better still chewing on a mutton bunny chow from Goundens in Umbilo.
Maybe some day the gaping hole left by his death will be papered over. Maybe the pain in our hearts will recede.
Maybe.
