Towards the end of last year, and after a few concerning announcements, Neil Whitfield, retired teacher, author of the Floating Life series of blogs, and Neil’s Commonplace Book, passed away. I found out last week via a few searches online after not being able to contact him through the blog comments.

I first met Neil who then posted as “Ninglun” online – I’m going to say – back in 2006, or maybe even late 2005, in the comments on AV’s Five Public Opinions blog while it was still hosted on Blogspot. Comments at Five Public Opinions could get…. lively. With hindsight, Neil seemed to have an infinite reserve of patience, because boy wasn’t I an irritable, prickly customer back then? One among a number I guess, not that that ever stopped Neil from showing grace.

That period, from around early 2006 to April of 2009 was kind of a golden era for Australian blogging, back before Twitter, Facebook and streaming video content started cutting into the scene. (Australian atheist blogging also had a culture distinct from its US counterpart – not that Neil was an atheist at the time, he did partake in the discussions and was a valued contributor).

AV bowed out of blogging towards the end of that period, and neither Neil nor myself heard from him again, although on a few occasions Neil and I reminisced and wished that we could. A part of me hopes that AV gets this news somehow, although my old blogging haunts are now gone and the usual channels fell away over a decade ago.

(This is the point in the conversation where someone would make a joke about intercessory prayer).

Neil chugged on, continuing blogging while so many of the old stalwarts closed up shop, the Australian blogosphere practically falling away around him. If I recall correctly, the New South Wales State Library has archived some of his past blogging, so I’m going to have to look into that.

I started making plans to visit Neil in Wollongong back in 2019. The plan was, I’d book into a hostel in The ‘Gong, catch Iron Maiden’s planned 2020 tour while it passed through Sydney, and finally meet Neil in person. That and maybe grab a meal at Diggers.

Suffice to say, the COVID pandemic saw to the end of that plan, and I’ve been pretty much bound to Adelaide ever since. I’m sad I’ll never get to meet Neil in person, but I am still grateful for the writing he’s left us all with, and for the lessons I’ve learned from him.

A kind rebuke from the Five Public Opinions era about my Humpty Dumptyish philosophy of language will be something I hold on to for some time yet, and I expect to come across things from time to time and wonder “what would Neil make of this?”

As a conversationalist, and as an educator, he had that effect on people.

Vale Neil Whitfield (1943-2024).

~ Bruce