James Langmead (or Jim, jimlang, or jil depending on how you knew him) was a regular poster on the newsgroup comp.sys.sinclair, World of Spectrum, assorted other retro gaming forums, and chatter on IRC Spectrum channels. He also set up and maintained Speccy Spoilers (currently down), a site which archived Spectrum game endings for people too crap to complete the games themselves. Or something.
I’ve known him, as much as you know anyone online, for almost 10 years, mainly through comp.sys.sinclair and IRC, but over the last year or so via email too.
He’d not been well for some time, and in the latter half of last year was admitted, long term, to hospital. Even there, we still maintained contact via email every few weeks, and he was, as ever (despite his painful condition) pretty cheerful and jokey about the whole thing. On Christmas Day I received what was to be my last email from him. He wished the Spectrum “community” a happy Christmas, and said he was currently building up his strength for an upcoming operation.
Over the next few months, emails went unanswered. Finally, yesterday, Daren from the IRC channel Jim and I often chatted on did what the rest of us hadn’t dared for the last few months – rang the only number we had where we could possibly contact him. Needless to say, the news was bad.
Jim had passed away at the end of March. He will be missed.
Condolences to anyone who was in contact with Jim.
I’ve had one to two similar experiences with people i knew online. One guy did pass away (who i didn’t know was ill) and heard the news through someone else. Another guy who i knew was ill and just disappeared. It’s almost a year now since i last spoke to him but i have no “real life” means to get in touch so i had to assume the worse….
Indeed he’s already missed.
Chat on IRC during the day has been so bloody quiet compared to when he was around…whether he was off on one of his rants or not!
Hey, this is Jim’s youngest brother. I never saw him that often for the last few years as I’ve worked at sea and before that lived and worked in the north of England while he was in the south. He died on April the 11th 2007 at about 6:30pm GMT and I was there. He was on a lot of painkillers but I think he was aware his family were around him and he seemed to take it very casually and never showed any fear and I’ve never seen anyone take something on the chin that big and so easily and never will do again in this life. Someone says somewhere it was the end of March but it was April 11th. Just found his name on google so had to say something. What killed him was Chrohn’s disease which doesn’t kill that many people but he had it in the extreme to the point where his intestines were basically useless so was fed through a tube in the heart for about 8 months and I have to say he took it better than I would ever have. Thanks for posting comments about him. Keep doing it.
I posted this message as I didn’t know what else to do. I never expected his family to find it, but I’m glad you have done.
We’d not heard from him in ages so were expecting the worst anyway, but it was still a shock when we found out š