Almost every word you’ll have read on a Toccata Classics/Toccata Next release or in a Toccata Press book over the past decade or so was typeset by Darren Craig, through his company Kerrypress, based in St Albans. His Fridays were sacrosanct – whatever the weather, he went fishing – but otherwise he would often work through the weekend to make sure we could meet our production deadlines. My use of the past tense obviously indicates bad news: Darren died on 31 March, from an aggressive cancer; he was 55.
Oddly enough, he and I never met, but we often spoke on the phone, and I must have sent more e-mails to him than to anyone else on the planet. (His brother Alan has taken over the typesetting for our Toccata output, and it’s already clear that Darren’s helpfulness and willingness to put himself out to meet those tight deadlines is a Craig family trait.) Darren and I did have plans to meet at last: he was going to come down to London for a drink – and bring me some Scotch pies (a treasured memory from my Scottish childhood) from a local source he had discovered. But last autumn cancer was discovered and thwarted our plans; a botched NHS operation then affected his ability to eat properly, and within a few months he was gone. In all the time we worked together, I can’t recall him ever saying ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that – you’ll have to wait’; instead, there would be a PDF in my intray early the next morning. But he wasn’t just a valued colleague – he had become a friend, and I’ll miss him.
