There are so many reasons I will remember you fondly. As a grandad, you taught us and gave us the opportunity for many things. You and nana let us be children, let us explore, let us imagine...

We played card games for pennies in a parachute tent drinking 'egg nog' , we built a mud oven and cooked on it, we 'sold' our artwork to family and neighbours from our museum (your front room), we went swimming alot. You cooked on the bbq in the yard where we were allowed to have chicks; the same yard where we raced snails. You always made your bbq sauce. 

We played on the roof, and chalked a garden on your freshly painted green paint. The same roof we had a food fight on and threw melon seeds everywhere.

You and nana introduced us to classic film like chitty bang bang, BFG, and my fair lady that you had taped for us to watch on our weekend sleepovers. We had boxing matches in the living room, I can still hear you both telling us to punch the gloves. You chopped up vegetables for us to play shops, you cooked our tiny fish that we caught on the beach and made us fish soup (which we all knew was gross). You let us use your tools and spare wood and taught us some basic skills.

You always taught us to spend a pound and save a pound.

I will always tell my children about you, a difficult childhood through the war and being shipped out, your army days in the stores where I think rationing was the start of your lifelong obsession with saving and making things out of nothing, your tyre fitting and Wheeler dealing with part worns, living in fear of deportation before becoming a Maltese citizen, and ironically, I think you were more Maltese than English in truth; and all the songs, and instruments and grotty sessions that gave you so so many stories. You became a story teller to anyone who would listen.

You were happy that you have lived your life, I just wish you and nana had had the opportunity for that one last cruise.

Thank you for the lessons and the memories. I will always remember you x