Lying in bed. Can't sleep. Thinking of...

you... Maisie... the 1970 World Cup. Watching it in your flat in Heaton (5th Street? )...eating a bacon sarnie in a cafe the morning Hendrix died.

That flat in Dunston when Lee and Claire were born. All those mice!!! I was up from Wales on holiday.

Then Allerdene. That shirt with the cartoon American football players on it. The collar went over your jacket collar.  The flared Jean's with the small turn ups. That was the fashion. The bottle of Aramis when I started shaving.

 The part time job you got me at the Railway Club. It got me Oldfields Tubular Bells  and Sabbath's Paranoid and my first cheese cloth shirt and independence. 

When you met Susan you two hit it off straight away. Rachel was born then.  I was proud and absolutely terrified as the best man at your wedding to Shirley.  Intermittent meetings with you, Shirley, Rachel, Caroline and then James. How they have all grown. And... the hat I got from Sorrento. You really liked that hat.

Memories, tears and smiles. Gonna miss you.