I'm running this years Southampton marathon in September in memory of my brother Chris, who committed suicide two years ago.

My mom got pissed off because this page is meant to be fun and if my brother would read it, make him happy.... So.... my brother was a fun loving person, reckless, wild, and no respect for any kind of authority.

He loved soccer, skateboarding, listening to punk rock and smoking marijuana.  i think his best times overall was when he was in middle school, where he had a relationship with the love of his life, Remi, and he was skateboarding in downtown Tokyo regularly, and playing junior youth soccer for the professional team, Tokyo Verdy.  And this was when, as you may remember, when Verdy were super bad ass, with Ramos, Miura Kazu, Kitazawa, and were winning everything in Japan at the time.  

He enjoyed skateboarding and soccer for the whole of his life.  He had so much talent as a skateboarder, he was Really good.  On his very first day with a skateboard, he landed a kickflip, which is like an ollie but the board also flips.  I just checked on google, it's meant to take two weeks to two months to land one, which shows how talented he was.  I also remember that when he was 18 or 19 a car company in Tokyo paid him a few thousand dollars for doing a heel flip over a car whilst they took photos.  I'm sure that if he had the right support and environment he could have gone pro.

He was more of a street skater compared to a ramp skater.  His favourite trick was the Saburoku, short for 360 flip, Saburoku-ju.  Thats a really good one, where it's like a kick flip but the entire board spins 360 degrees horizontally as well as vertically so you just see him jump up whilst the skateboard does a big spin, and it looks even better when he lands it after doing that from the top of 10 stairs.. i think he once said he landed a 14 stair ollie once.

One funny thing is that.... he was a show off, haha..  He used to skateboard just under our house at Miharashi no Ie in Tokyo, and while I play soccer at the car park bit working on my shooting, he would skateboard down the main ramp going to the bottom from the top, and jumping over the marble ball and doing a skateboard trick.... But..... every day early in the afternoon, the young elementary school girls walk past that bit on their way home from school, and when there's a crowd of them watching, he would always entertain them by doing a big trick.... My mom really found that funny, because you would see him do the trick, and always... Always, afterwards he would look up to see if these girls were watching him... haha.. he likes the girls cheering for him, haha, which is understandable.

Another time at that same part at the bottom of our house, he jumped over the road into the main area, and then landed on a big bench with his shin first, and flipped over and crashed on his back, and broke his shin... i remember i was there, and he looked at me and said.... aaahh... eddie.... pass me my cigarettes....   haha... and then my mom called the ambulance which took him to the hospital later..

For music, he really liked NOFX and Rancid, which are American punk rock bands.  Just before he died, a year before, I actually went with him to a NOFX concert in Brixton, south London.  That was fun, and I'll remember that...  My brother was the guy at the front smoking weed and passing it around the crowd, I remember the security guard looked so uncomfortable staring at my brother, but I'm sure the actual NOFX guys didn't mind at all, haha.

I think of one our happiest years as a family, as well as for Chris himself, was when we lived in Hawaii on Oahu for a year... that was fourth grade for me and sixth grade for chris.  We lived in a pretty awesome condominium with all the trimmings.... a good view, our own rooms, tennis courts, gym, swimming pool and jacuzzi, it was really sweet, looking back now.. maybe we should have stayed there... after school, our mother would pick us up to either to go surfing and bodyboarding at waikiki beach, or on our way home we would get a whopper from the drivethrough at burger king, and always we'd ask them to chop it in half, so then both my brother and i would get a half each.  That was a really fun year and as a family we were all very happy then.

In boarding school in Bristol, he was quite a bad ass.  I don't really know the extent of all his mischief, but usually, instead of going to classes, him and his friends used to go around stealing things from all the rooms.  I remember Pete Lynes bought his favourite brand new Nike trainers, the white ones with the big tick on it that went missing because my brother stole it from his room, haha.  

He was never really academic at all, he didn't like school.  Once in english class in middle school, everyone had to write a poem, he wrote this, which I'll share, I think he got suspended for a few days because of this poem.  

I hate this class, I hate this class.  Take this paper and shove it up your ass.

He was never afraid to tell people as well as show them, teachers especially, but later in life, policeman too, how much he hated them... i think that was the anarchist in him, he hated rules and he hated the police and any kind of authority.

After graduating from high school at Nougyou high school in Fuchu, where he met one of his best gang of friends, Yoshito and Iori-chan, he lived pretty chilled out, not really doing as much bad things as before.... he lived peacefully, although to be honest he didn't have any healthy hobbies other than listening to punk rock music.  Just sort of getting by and listening to punk rock music and living a relaxed life, without any work ambitions or anything like that.

During his Fuchu days, him and Yoshito had a punk rock band, i think they called themselves - - Chris and the drunkards -- They played a lot of NOFX and Rancid and did concerts, at least a few times.... Chris was the main vocal and bass, Yoshito vocal and electric guitar, a guy called Lion on the drums, and Kuma as another electric guitar...... those were good times... Chris was happy back then.

We used to go to --- lion's hole --- lion no ana -- a lot with yoshito and the gang of people there... that was fun, lion was a private bar in nagayama...  he used to go there often.

People might have seen him as a bad person, and he might have had a reputation as a bad man, however I would disagree because... he was really good at taking care of me and looking after me.  To his family, he was a good man, although my mom may disagree to an extent, because they never really got on well... but even then, they had their good moments.  And although he did do bad things at times, mostly to himself through drug addiction.....but  he never really meant to hurt anyone, he never went outdoors because he wanted to injure or harm someone, and he really cared for his family.

And he had a troubled childhood, primarily because he could never in his life breathe through his nose, as he had a cleft, so even as a baby he couldn't sleep at night....  And he had problems in school from elementary school and hated everything at times, because he couldn't breathe properly...  maybe he hated that he had to endure pain all the time whilst other people had it easy, and this alienated him socially and made him hate the other people around him, I don't know.

I guess he had a troubled life.  But I'm sure he had lots of fun, too.... I remember when I was 17 he said to me that, looking at me studying and being square, haha, he said to me,  Eddie, I've already had more fun in my life than you would in your whole lifetime... And he lived another 13 years after that, so in his own way, he must have had a full life. 

I heard this once, that he beat up a backstreet boy in downtown Tokyo, Roppongi, in a club because the backstreet boy was dancing with my brother's ex girlfriend... so then the backstreet boy ran out of the club and legged it full pace up the road, whilst my brother was chasing him on his skateboard...

his entire life was like that.... almost like, everything he did on a daily basis was a cool skateboard trick or an amazing soccer finish goal, on a daily basis.  he would do things, for example, kick over a teacher called Mr Tate whilst he's riding on his bicycle, completely offensive and outrageous things that no one else would ever imagine doing... But I'm sure he had his reasons, he sort of had this deep hatred for all authority, teachers and policeman especially, I don't know why.  Perhaps because he liked doing bad things, so then every year in school he would put the teacher in a tough ethical position as to how to deal with someone like that and maybe the teachers hated him too, which only made my brother hate teachers even more.

It's a shame that he couldn't have a normal adulthood and a good retirement, but I'm also sure that he never had regrets.  He wanted to live the way he did and was happy with how he lived.  His philosophy was always to live reckless, wild, fast and die young.

If you're reading this and you have a good Chris Milne story to share, please do, it would be fun to hear about it.  

Goodbye Chris, I'll miss you dearly and will pray for you.