RIP 'dad'

When I left school aged 16 to start an apprenticeship at Rolls Royce I moved from Weston-super-Mare to Bristol.? Rolls Royce arranged 'digs' for me with a family up on the Patchway estate. I think my mum dropped me off, but I can't remember.

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I had my own room, I would get up every day and be given breakfast, go to work, come home from work, be given an evening meal and then go and sit in my room with my books...it's 1979 remember...there was ZERO 'tech'.

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I did that every day for a month. Slowly (I was a bit wet behind the ears) over the next two months I started to make friends.? Friends like Greg Grant , that I still have today, 44 years later.? But I met one person in particular who would change my life forever.? That person is Mark Hoare . We hung out at work, we played badminton with his friends and his father (Dave).

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We became firm friends over those couple of months as Mark took me, this shy boy from Weston-super-Mare under his wing. I met his mum (Murly), who, the first time I met encouraged me to come into their home as I'd got there before Mark and I said "No thank you, I'll wait out here for him". Yep, me, I was THAT shy. So I sat outside on my 50cc moped.

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Over Christmas 1979 Mark's sister decided to shack up with her boyfriend in Birmingham. Which meant that a room became free at 10 Elms Grove.? A room which Dave & Murly offered to me.

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I moved in on 2 January 1980. Ryan's Daughter was on TV and the house was full of people.? As I would soon learn, it often was.

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The plan was for me to stay for a 'few months' while I sorted out a bedsit or flat share.? In the end, I stayed for three and a half years and only moved out when I left Bristol to move to Portsmouth to go to the Polytechnic there.

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And in those three and half years became very close to Dave & Muriel.? It was a lovely family home. Everyone was very ‘close’ and we would laugh as much as we would argue.? Well, when I say ‘we’, it was mostly Dave & Mark arguing.? Even being whipped one day with a dog chain (it’s a long story) does not dim the love I have for the time I spent becoming part of their family.

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Over the next four years whilst at college I lost both my parents (dad to a heart attack, mum to cancer). So, I consider myself very lucky for the last 35+ years to have a second set of parents in Dave & Murly. And, a brother in the form of Mark and a third sister in Jane.

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In fact, Mark was my best man at my first wedding where he used the line

"David is the brother I never had, and actually didn't want!".?

We both still laugh at that line today.

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So why share this story now? Well as you can guess from the headline, after 95 fabulous years on planet earth we lost Dave this weekend.? He has been seriously ill for months so although it's so, so sad that he is not here offering opinions on ANYTHING, at least he is no longer suffering.

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The whole family have been living in Australia for 20+ years and I went to Sydney in March last year to see him, knowing full well it would probably be the last time but, being as tough as old boots he's hung on until now.? And in April this year I will be back in Sydney to give Muriel the biggest hug a 'son' can and to celebrate the marriage of my godson.

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Miss you ‘dad’.