One year ago today was the worst day of my life. The day my Dad died. Suddenly and without warning in the early hours of 11th December 2005 he passed away, he was 71 years old. No one expected it, his mother was in her 80s when she died and his father only died a few years ago aged 94. But in one awful year his brother, his cousin (who lived with them as a brother when he was younger) and he all passed away. A whole generation wiped out with no one left to tell the tales.

Not a single day has passed since then that I have not thought of him, and I have shed tears on several occasions. I was very close to my Dad, we went to Oxford Speedway together during the summer, to every home match and to some away matches. We played table tennis together. We played golf together. We went on holidays together. We went to watch football together. Barely a day passed that I didn’t speak to him either in person or on the phone, he would ring me with the latest snippet of speedway news hopeful that I hadn’t ‘heard’ it first from the internet. I miss him terribly as do the rest of the family.

Rest in peace Dad.