2009 was a significant year for me in many ways, but it was ten years ago today at about this time in the afternoon (4.30pm) on the 12th of March that my dad flew away and left the earth after a short bout of pneumonia and a much longer struggle with dementia.

I never knew either of my grandfathers as they had passed away before I was born, but when I was a little boy I remember several occasions when playing with toys or in the house or something, and it would be mid-September and my mum would say “it’s the anniversary today that my dad died, and the weather was just like this”, and though I heard her, I got on with building my lego tower or sticking down bits of coloured paper and never really knew what she was trying to say…until it came to that day for me.

Not so much the day he died, because beyond the pure facts this day (or is it that day?) is still a bit of a mystery. But it’s all the days afterwards, and there is something in the weather always cloaking and bracketing this anniversary and always being reliably “Spring” that says “don’t forget, we won’t let you forget” and so right now I am remembering my dad, Roy Thomas Helyer Davies (1924-2009) X