Remembering the date, I was going to wind my dear papa up with a long and circumstantial story about a series of phone calls while he was out. I didn't do it as a real phonecall pre-empted anything I was going to say with the genuine and sad news that one of his oldest friends, Jacob's godfather, John Ward died last night.

Maybe I'll write some more later, but this is one of those cases where the old platitude of its being a 'merciful release' really is appropriate as he had had cancer for a long time which had invaded and weakened his whole body so that in the last few months the slightest movement was liable to leave him with broken bones, and morphine was a constant companion.

When I say 'oldest friends' I am guilty of a serious inaccuracy. Father's three oldest friends are, like him (touch wood), hale and hearty in their eighties. John was considerably younger. Two of his is three grown-up children are now with their mother, while the third is on his way home from Canada.