Writing the past

Today would've been my dad's 85th birthday. He died on July 5, 2004, a week after his 76th birthday.
He was a one-off. I'm aware even as I write that everyone's dad is a one-off...
When my brother and I cleared our parents' house after my mum died in 2010, we found loads of miscellaneous 'stuff'.
He was a real polymath. Loved absorbing knowledge. He would have been in heaven in the age of Google, but it passed him by.
One of the surprises in the Patience archive was the beginnings of a novel.
This is the beginning.
I'd love to finish what he started...