WHEN a friend dies, even if he is a few years older than you, there is a tendency to be reminded rather sharply of your own mortality. That happened when my pal, Watford Observer cartoonist Terry Challis passed away last month.

I became a lot more reflective and it is funny how many times I have thought since his death: “Terry would enjoy that” or “I must ask Terry about this”. Perhaps it is a subconscious thing for we were close but I do not recall thinking such thoughts quite so regularly when he was alive.

Last month I stayed in Watford much longer than anticipated because I wanted to be at his funeral yet all I saw were reasons to be depressed.

I suppose it is an age thing – a brief flirting with depression or just another lurch towards becoming a Grumpy Old Man - but I experienced it when I set off for Watford FC to obtain a club flag to be draped over Terry’s coffin. I came down the Hempstead Road and, such is the volume of traffic nowadays, you are able to study houses and developments en route. The road was once very distinguished but has lost much of that lustre and one of the last vestiges of “the glory that was Cassiobury House”, Little Cassiobury, looks like it is being bullied into submission by the new developments that surround it by the Technical College.

Then there are new developments by the central roundabout, causing me to reflect how many more cars that will add to the traffic headache of central Watford.

I thought I would pop into the office and passed the site where the Sun used to be. I was to be shocked again. The old Sun clock tower is in an appalling state. I thought someone was supposed to be looking after that and preserving it as a reminder of when Watford had an individual identity – a brewery and print town. Who is responsible for championing these edifices, Dorothy?

Likewise Frogmore House in lower High Street appears always to be at risk. It is sadly typical of Watford that the town only starts to regret when it is too late, and another part of its heritage and identity withers.

I arrived at Vicarage Road and noted the growth of the development behind the stadium – another piece of ill-considered planning, totally out of harmony and sympathy with the stadium and surroundings, which limits the club and the stadium, with nothing more than the memory of too few millions frittered away all too quickly.

But with whom could I talk to and commiserate. Terry was gone; John Ausden, who was Watford through and through, had passed away only a fortnight earlier. They would have joined me in the head-shaking and tut-tutting about the state of things, the changes wrought and the price of tea. Ironically Terry and John grew up in the same environs in central Watford, lower high street, so they had witnessed so much change closer to home.

Years back, I could have dropped in at Bushey Museum and chewed the cud of yesteryear with Bryen Wood, but he too has been claimed by the Grim Reaper this year.

Had I left Watford in the mid-1960’s or even after that predictable white elephant Charter Place was opened in the early 1970’s, I would have missed the town. Now I do not miss Watford because it has long since ceased to be the town I knew, and each return brings that fact painfully into focus.

There are people I miss and I regret there is not enough time to keep in touch with them all. I saw some of them at Terry’s funeral but the moments were too brief and too frantic. I vowed, when travelling back through France, to make a list and try and get back in touch. Then again if I had a drink, curry or lunch with all who have offered, I would have a weight problem.

Doubtless, if I live long enough, I will come back from France to find that the state of the Sun clock tower, Frogmore House and Little Cassiobury had become so desperate, there was little alternative but to bulldoze the sites and use them “for projects vital to the town’s infrastructure”.

And the officials will try to ease the blows by naming the new edifices after the ones they replaced “so keeping in touch with the town’s heritage” as the spin merchants will have it.

We have seen it all before, I reflected as I drove on. Some call it progress and I accept they are, in part, correct. But I call it change and as you get older, progress is something you can admire but thoughtless change has a tendency to get up your nasal passages.

After negotiating Watford’s traffic, I brought back the flag for Terry’s coffin.

“That seems light for a flag,” it was observed.

“Yes they don’t make flags like they …,” I found I tried to bite back the words because I realized, with mounting irritation, I was sounding just like my father.