Thirty years ago today, at 7.15am, my father died.

This is a photograph of him as a young man — around the age when (as I recounted in my book) he was teaching other people Morse and dreaming about becoming a radio ‘Ham’. The photograph was in my mother’s possessions when she died in 1989. My youngest sister, Margaret, discovered it and sent it on to me. It was the first time I’d ever seen the picture, and it moved me beyond words because of the way it captures the essence of his optimistic, phlegmatic spirit.