One the advantages of living an international life is meeting amazing people you would never have otherwise met.

The disadvantage is that many of your best friends live very far away, and you can never invite them round to dinner, be invited to dinner, go out to the theatre together, or spend an evening talking in a bar. You just have to be grateful for those rare occasions when you end up in the same town somewhere in the world.

Michael was one of those friends for me. I have known him for probably 25 years. When we were colleagues at W3C we would at least have the knowledge that we could meet up once a year at the annual team event. Otherwise, we might sometimes end up at the same conference. Since Covid times, we have only met at the two ends of a video link.

The last time we physically met, in 2019, he happened to be nearby in Utrecht, so we got together for the day, and visited design museums there.

Michael was erudite, jolly, calm, knowledgeable, wise, and a good person to know. He and I had similar technical backgrounds; for instance he was one of the few people I could talk with about van Wijngaarden grammars.

We still worked together: I was due to speak to him next Tuesday at our regular bi-weekly meeting.

I will miss him greatly.