Another friend gone all too soon

RIP FRANCES LAGOUSSIS NEE COOK – YOU ARE MISSED

(Posted 20th November 2015)

My one and only attempt to venture into golfing, way back in the mid 1980’s while working as Group Operations Director for the Flamingo Group of Companies in Nairobi, is attributed to Frances’ constant prodding and teases. She was managing the coast operations of Flamingo, and me being a perfectionist when it comes to work – never quite getting there but for sure trying as hard as I could – must have driven her nuts. Having me take up golf perhaps was the one way to get back at me, teaching me that struggling to get a little white ball into a hole several hundred metres away might show me my own limitations. She of course was a coast golfing icon already back then, Captain of the Nyali Golf and Country Club and a hugely popular figure on the social scene in Mombasa. I have forgotten what her golf handicap was but no doubt it must have been good, considering all the trophies she brought home.

When on company retreats, the Mount Kenya Safari Club and the Aberdare Country Club, or when visiting the Flamingo coast office, she put in much effort to show me take a good stand when addressing the little white ball, how to swing and she did not blink when I uttered one foul curse after another for hitting my wood into the ground or eventually getting another pathetic tee shot off. If she laughed she did not let me see it but somewhere inside her mind must have felt the satisfaction that Wolfgang had met his match and for once his aim at perfection had been brought crashing down to reality.

We became good friends and I absorbed many lessons from her, for my pathetic golfing as much as for taking it easier on my colleagues and staff at work. She was everything a fair English maiden should be – I say that irrespective of the fact that she was Kenyan of British descent – and then some more. When she tied the knot with Panayis Lagoussis in the late 1990’s – I was already for several years a resident of Kampala by then – she was very happy.

My Flamingo days ended, as did hers eventually but we never quite lost touch, periodically having prolonged chat sessions on social media and, much treasured, once in a blue moon literally bumping into each other. When we did we talked about her social calendar, Chaine de Rotisseur dinners, her golfing – I tossed the sport no sooner than I had moved from Mombasa to Uganda – and many other things. Connected on social media we both had a chance of seeing what the other was up to, leading to ‘likes and comments’ and an occasional cyber chat.

While preparing to leave Watamu two days ago did news then arrive from another former Flamingo colleague that Frances had passed away, causing me to look for a chair to sit down and take a deep breath. It sounded impossible, unreal, that someone still so young should no longer be with us but the bad news was soon enough confirmed by others too. I have been struggling with this for the past two days and still make no sense of it, except for that intense sense of loss one normally only feels for people much closer to oneself.

Our common journey, which commenced when I met Frances some thirty years ago, had come to an abrupt and very premature end. I mourn her passing as do all her former colleagues, staff, fellow golfers, social circles, close friends and relatives. In mourning her however I also pay tribute to a warm and cheerful human being, a true lady and – looking back – someone who always had my back when we worked together and while I lived at the coast. I miss you Frances Cook, very very much!