I turned 80 in February, not in Mexico, but maybe I’ll have better luck next winter when I turn 81 - God willing.
Anne turns 81 in three weeks time. We were planning a party, but it will be a more modest affair.
In sum: We salute the passing years, and are grateful to have so many of them.
That was not the case for our lovely Sophy who’s life ended at the age of 10, nor Oliver who died at the age of 46. So be it. 
We celebrate pregnancies (well, mostly, anyway), and we live our lives, and for each of us, our life comes to an end.
If birth is to be celebrated how can death be wrong ? It is only the completion of our life cycle, along with Gerbils, Earwigs and even TV Presenters.
But it’s sad though, to lose someone who added so much to our own lives and cheered us up, and helped us along the way.

Robin was such a friend. - A gentle man, which we can roll it into the one word, “Gentleman.”

I recall the evening we arrived from Canada, and had a bottle of Bubbly before dinner. And another, and another, oh dear ! It was five bottles before dinner.
He apologized that not all the vegetables were from his garden.

He never said much about underwater welding on the oil platforms off Aberdeen. 
I quietly concluded that he was braver and more skilled than he liked to mention.
He made good money and earned every penny of it. 

He told us once how he and his friend won the contract to pull down a factory chimney: 
They had never done it before, but they heard that other companies were charging a fortune for the job, and - over a beer, they reckoned they could do the job for a fraction
of the price: They fixed a steel cable into a concrete block inside the base of the chimney, hauled a cable up inside it, stretched it over to where the chimney should fall, and 
winched away until it happened.

He asked one day: “What is the Dutch language ?”
“It’s the German language gone badly wrong."

Let his kindness and good humour become ours’, and let us pass them on to others as he passed them on to us. 

Rest in Peace dear friend, 
and Thank You.

Roger and Annie Clapham