It was an honour for my brother Glen and I to help carry our father Colin here today. Because for all of our lives – and that of our sister Tracey – he has carried us. He’s been the rock on which the Price family – our generation and those who came after us – has rested. We always knew that however far we travelled, whatever wrong turnings we might take, whatever disagreements we might have, he would always be there for us. And so today we are here for him. To say goodbye but also to say thank you. We meet in sadness, although he wouldn’t want us to be sad. We will miss him terribly. We already do. But we will never forget him and we will never stop being proud of him. As a father and a grandfather and more recently a great-grandfather. But perhaps most of all as a loyal and loving husband for over sixty years to our beloved mother, Jean. On behalf of Jean and of all the family I want to thank you all for being here with us. To grieve a little, but above all to remember. And there he helped us. Because nobody who met Colin Price is ever likely to forget him. He really was one of a kind. He was a big man. Physically, of course, right down to his size 13 feet. But a big personality too. He could be incredibly considerate and extremely irritating. Superbly generous and unbelievably stubborn. And why? Because at all times he was his own man. He said what he thought and did what he thought to be right. And he wasn’t too bothered if you agreed with him or not. He was a stickler for punctuality. If you said you’d be there at a certain time you could expect a phone call from him if you were just five or ten minutes late. So he’d have been pleased that everybody got here on time today. I know some people have come a long way but I hope there were no dramas at home getting ready. Nobody overslept? I only ask because another thing Dad was very adamant about was bad language – especially in films. I made the terrible mistake once of suggesting we all watch Four Weddings and a Funeral. I expect most of you remember the opening scene. Dad sat in icy silence as Hugh Grant swore like a trooper for what felt like ages because he’d overslept. So if that was you this morning, Colin would have be tutting. He tutted quite a lot to be honest. There was definitely a touch of the Victor Meldrews about him. He had some rather old-fashioned views at times. He’d get furious if anybody, especially on TV, made mistakes with their grammar. He thought there were too many women reading the news, no matter how good their grammar was. Men should shake hands and not embrace. And he was slow to move with the times in other ways. But as Pope John 23rd said, “Men are like wine – some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age”. In his later years he mellowed a lot and was more than ready to embrace the way we live today. He became a silver surfer. I’m not sure he ever really understood how computers and the internet work – he’s not the only one there – but emails and Facebook became an important part of his life. Although every time there was an update and a page looked different to how it had before, he’d moan, “Why can’t they just leave things the way they were?” Three and a half years ago when Dad was told – mistakenly as it turned out – that he had terminal cancer, he was keen to record his recollections of his own life so we could put them online for people to listen to if they wanted to. The link is in your Order of Service. His memory was unbelievable. He could remember not just where he’d lived and when, but the exact address including the house number – even going back to when he was a boy. That’s a gift I’m afraid none of us has inherited. But we do remember many of things that made Colin, as I said, one of a kind. He may have matured like a good wine but when we were growing up and money was tight he insisted on making home-made wine out of anything he could find in the garden. All the silver birch trees had pipes coming out of them to drain the sap. And we used to have to collect fallen quince and pick mountains of blackberries so they could all go into big smelly vats in the spare bedroom. It tasted awful. It’s fair to say that at that stage in his life, dad liked his wine – but nobody else did. Thankfully later, especially after moving to Spain, he realised that the professionals could make much better wine than he could. He loved the house in Moraira – which was built to his own design on the side of a steep hill. And he was very proud of the big swimming pool. Although watching him jump from the balcony two storeys up into the water was terrifying. He taught us all to swim from a very early age – part of his belief in equipping us for the future in every way he could. Although Tracey remembers going home and telling him proudly that she’d just swum a mile for the first time. He didn’t believe her and made her do it all over again in front of Mum and Dad and our grandmother, Nandy. He was a very practical man. Not only designing the house in Spain but extending the one in East Grinstead where Tracey, Glen and I grew up. He did everything himself – the plumbing, the electrics, the brickwork. And when he wasn’t building or renovating he was maintaining the car. Other people’s dads bought shiny new ones. Our dad kept his running for ever. Despite, I might add, the best efforts of his eldest son to wreck it. I was very keen to borrow the car but had no interest at all in looking after it. Glen remembers emerging from underneath it with Dad like two soggy chimneysweeps, black from head to foot, after I had blown a gasket or broken the cam-shaft. Even now, I don’t have a clue what that means, but I stood idly by convincing myself it didn’t matter because they were enjoying themselves. Whether it was cars or anything else, Dad never believed in throwing anything away. So if anybody here has any use for thirty year old fan heaters, or jars of washers sorted into small, medium and large, or unopened packs of fuse wire in every available width that he bought just in case they were needed some day, or a collection of worn but still wearable size 13 shoes, have a word with us later. Dad loved to travel and his job with the British Oversea Trade Board meant he got to see some very exotic places. He’d always bring us back presents – chocolate, a lot of chocolate (which we blame for Tracey’s life-long addiction), silk kimonos from China, and mementoes from Korea and all over Europe. Whenever he could he would take Mum with him, and the kids too - if he could add a week’s leave onto the end of a work trip. He’d spend his allowance for hotels to put us all up on a campsite instead and we remember him going off in the morning trying to keep his work shoes from getting too muddy. The point is that he always put Mum and the rest of us first. He’d work hard in the evenings and weekends to make sure we had a nice place to live. Both our parents would go without luxuries so there was always money for school books, or swimming lessons or school trips. If any of us was hurt or in trouble he would drop everything and come running. It didn’t always end well for all concerned. When Tracey had an accident at the swimming pool, Dad leapt in the car and failed to do his usual routine of checking behind all the wheels first. Glen was very fond of his rabbit, Patch, but that day we learned that death comes to all of us at some time. On November 11th – Remembrance Day, which was always very important to him – Colin died himself. He’d been ill for a long time but we were thankful that, despite thinking we’d lose him three years ago, we had all that extra time with him in our lives. He passed away very peacefully without regaining consciousness, with Mum at his side. The following day would have been his 89th birthday so we were all close enough to get down to be with Mum and, by one of those strange coincidences, to stand around his bed with her as we heard the firing of the gun for the minute’s silence through the hospital window.