A loving tribute, a thank-you and a card trick: all from the heart.

My Dad died earlier this month: I don’t yet know when or if the tears will stop.  He was a big man and he leaves a big hole, but filled with happy memories.  I can’t exactly say I modelled myself on Dad: that was a bit beyond me.  But I did follow his example where I could in the basics of honesty and hard work: painfully slowly at times perhaps but I hope I got there in the end.  We were different, but each proud of the other I think.

Of course, I now wish I’d managed to spend more time with him in the last few years.  The past year alone, he suffered strokes, heart problems, survived sepsis, countless other infections, pneumonia, a collapsed lung and saw off Covid-19.  But the last illness was just one too many although, as always, he fought it to the end.  He was just short of 90 and lived a full and worthwhile life: you can’t ask for anything more.

This isn’t the place for a poetic eulogy.  But, even just in an academic sense, the older I’ve got, the more I’ve realised just how much I owe to Dad.  I was never really a gifted student, despite what people might think.  And I proved many times over the years the ease with which I could get into trouble of one sort or another.  If it hadn’t been for the start that Dad gave me, I’d be in a very different place now.

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