During my stint in Germany, I learned that they love to use the folding ruler zollstock/meterstab (I was told wars have been fought over the naming, but I digress). I find it really is handy and preferable to a tape measure most of the time. Anyway, I asked one of my German colleagues to bring one back, as I stupidly snapped mine in half. And so he did, but one made of plastic and not the standard material of choice, birch. This version was not nearly as stiff and wouldn't hold itself up when fully extended. There I was, swinging a 2 meter long floppy ruler around in our area where 6 of us sit. Chris, uncharacteristically, didn't have much to contribute to this matter, other than to say, are you still on about the bloody ruler, after about 30 minutes of me complaining and making different shapes with it. And that was that.
A few days/weeks later, Chris gave me this brass and wooden folding ruler with beautiful patina. He was visiting his folks, remembered my apparent love of folding rulers, and dug this one out of his father's workshop. His father was a design engineer on the Concorde, and he often talked about the noise of a room full of people doing drawings by hand while smoking that he saw as a child. I was genuinely amazed that I now owned a tool that a Concorde engineer used to use. But clearly not a very careful one, Chris joked - you might just be able to see the saw marks on it.
That was Chris - the one who remembered all the little details. Quite a lot in fact. He was well known for having an unnatural capacity to be able to name the podium finishers for any given grand prix in history. Every now and then he was wrong, but we didn't care. He spent over 25 years in F1 including a brief detour making some overpriced car called McLaren F1 in a shed, together with Captain Ahab Jr probably. People who have never worked with him (of which there aren't many), still knew the one called Pointy. I preferred to call him Smudgy, which was his nickname from pencil drawing days. He remembered my old boss, Mark Preston, when Mark first came to the UK from Australia and declared that one day he would have his own F1 team. And he did just that. Mark says he learned much from Chris, and I too am glad that I had the privilege to have known him in the beginning of my F1 career.
We teased him a lot for his grumpy old ways, but he always laughed with us. Deep inside, we knew that he had been there and done all that, and we respected him equally for his experience as well as his ability to never take things too seriously. He was a "work dad" for most of us and that makes it particularly difficult to lose him. It had crossed my mind as we went on our ways to work from home/shutdown, that we could actually lose people during this period. It wasn't Covid-19 that got him, but an accident. The most upsetting part is that he was only a year or two away from retiring. His wife is from Brazil and they were planning to move there and buy a house on the beach. He was even planning on opening a British pub complete with a big fireplace - in the tropical heat. Typical Chris.
As long as I work, I will have his father's ruler on my desk. And I will think of him every time I see it. Rest easy, Chris Bowen. We will miss you.
Thanks all for reading, this is therapeutic for me. Of course I'm sad, but whenever I think of him and his memory, I remember something funny and that makes me smile. I think we should all be so fortunate to be remembered like that.
