We met before we were 21. You had a mop of unruly black hair, John Lennon style tinted glasses and a reputation for being a tad wild (not difficult in Tavistock, 1969). I pursued you as casually as possible.
 
We took a winter let on a holiday cottage built into a bank. Damp ran down the walls, one morning there was a drowned mouse in the loo and we spent quite a lot of time in the dark, it being the three-day week and power switch offs. On my birthday we ate Chocolate Bath Oliver biscuits my mother sent and drank coffee from a thermos. 
 
We went on to share terrors and triumphs chasing Sunday tabloid stories, in dread of ending up on the same doorstep.
We invested our youth in each other. Became the keeper of each other’s memories though latterly we wished we’d written a bit more of it down.
 
You gave me love and confidence and a million ideas. Sometimes, in a flat panic about a Big Ideas meeting on one paper or another, when we’d parked the car at the station on the way to work, I’d say ‘You can’t get out of the car until you give me six ideas.’ You always did. They were always terrific.
 
But most often we talked about our three brilliant children. It was a subject of which we never tired and never would. He was incredibly proud of you all. 
 
I shall miss you so much Bally. RIP my witty clever soul mate.