Pip

Today we said goodbye to Pip, 91 years young, and a life very well lived it seems.

My sister, a Brereton, married a Sharpe...but somehow not just any old Sharpe, a Brereton Sharpe.

Yes, Pip is short for Derek Martin Brereton Sharpe, so my sister married John who has our unusually rare surname as an even more rare family middle name.

Pip seems to be much easier, and takes less explaining.

Anyway, Pip and Jackie who sadly left us in 2015, and the whole Sharpe family gave my sister a family to call her own when she married John, a few years after our parents died. Today we went to join them to say our goodbyes to him.

As you can see a man of the cloth, but that was a second career after he had retired from teaching. Teching that took the whole family to Pakistan for 5 years in the 70s, in a Ford Cortina.

He'd done a lap of the globe before the end of the second world war as a child escaping to New Zealand and then Washington. Stories of the boat being torpedoed by a U-Boat means that today came very close to never being a thing.

Think Sunday night BBC1 9pm, there's a 6 part drama in there for sure, the trick will be to know what to leave out.

Goodbye Pip, you were great fun and one of life's characters. The world will be poorer for you leaving it.