My Dad’s birthday is in two days – he’s not “with us” any more, but I’m thinking about him. He went to Cambridge – I have no idea what he studied, but the important thing is that he went there. I was
thinking of calling my book ‘Daddy went to Cambridge’ – well, it made me laugh. He’d like it too.

He used to have this incredible pair of brown slippers – I think they were  suede to begin with; he must have got them when he was about twenty. The backs were completely flattened and all the sheep’s wool had been eroded away, but as they were still functional he saw no reason to get rid of them. His dressing-gown was even better: it was dark red with a very faint large check running through it – not one of those
dreadful scratchy boarding-school I hope no-one meets me running down the fire escape  in this ones. This was nice soft cotton but with regular use for forty odd years, it was more for show than warmth. My mother would have mended it and mended it, but there comes a point where there’s nothing left for a poor patch to hold on to.

I learnt useful things from my Dad – whenever I’m doing “a little judicious pruning” I think of him. Actually, it’s usually when I’m looking at our overgrown fig tree, and wondering how the hell to tackle it.

Old Man River was his song -he’d start off really low – you have to if you’re going to manage the high bits. He had a great booming voice – it could get embarrassing at the Carol Service when people turned round to look for the man making all the noise.