Today is the 12th Yahrzeit for Dad – 12 years since he left us. He and Mum were watching a World Cup football match between Germany and Algeria when Dad retired to bed unusually early, mid game. He never knew the final score (he wanted Germany to be defeated but they won!).

It was a perfect end to a life so well-lived which saw him leave the slums of the East End of his impoverished childhood to embark on a sixty-five year old adventure with the love of his life, Sybil.

Dad was ahead of his time in so many ways. He foresaw an end to the drudgery of a five-day, forty-hour week and believed that we would all have more leisure as machines and computers became more sophisticated. It didn’t happen in his lifetime but it’s happening now.

Dad knew about work-life balance and he lived it. He worked to live and his was not the pursuit of excess wealth. He played sports, played bridge, played with his children, cared for his parents all his life and in retirement put charity into action by volunteering with cancer patients. And he had fun and excitement in abundance and always was, as they say in modern parlance, “there for us” – his family, always.

As I write this with a lump in my throat, I realise that as each year passes I appreciate him more than I did in his lifetime.

Would he be proud of the book that I brought out in February based on his and Mum’s own writings? I think he would. He loved us and his grandchildren and his bonus great grandchildren.

My brother and I were privileged to have Dad as our father. We carry him with us as do our adult children who still miss him and his first great grandchild who remembers him so well. Thank you Dad💕