Stop all the clocks

"He kisses her on the bottom every night when they go to bed."

"Oh, uckifee."

I'm pretty sure I wasn't meant to hear that conversation between my gran and one of her sisters but it's the sort of thing that sticks in a nine-year-old's mind.

They were discussing the bedtime routine of another of the sisters, my great-aunt Joan, and her husband, Horace. That's them in the photo, back in 1961.

We're going to Uncle Horace's funeral today. He died last Sunday, aged 91.

Uncle Horace was a tease. I liked him but, as a child, was always slightly wary of him: I wasn't sure what he would do next and being a shy child, I feared the embarrassment.

As I grew older, I grew to love him more. He was still a tease but I knew how to deal with it better. I suppose it's in the last 20 years really, that I've got to know him. A visit to their house always took longer than I intended. Mainly because Auntie Joan has the family trait of talking a lot (I missed out on that gene). While she would update me on the family news - being the only sister left, and living in the heart of the village of Mumbles, her house became the 'centre' of the family and she knew everything - Uncle Horace would sit in his usual chair, throwing in the odd one-liner, making Auntie Joan tut, and say, 'Don't listen to him!'

He had a stroke 12 years ago, while in South Africa visiting their son and his family, but apart from a slight physical weakness, it didn't damage him.

But in the last few years he has gradually and visibly become frailer. In the last year, what he's said has been less - but no less entertaining - and he's rarely gone outside the house. And in the last few months the sparkle went. Life disappeared.

He saw both his sons die at a young age from cancer; his only grandson was found mysteriously dead in bed at the age of 23 - that was the only time I saw him cry and tremble with grief. His wife survived cancer and has looked after him and run the home for all of his life: I don't think he knew how to make a cup of tea.

But he knew how to make us laugh.

There's so much more I could say, things that are coming into my mind as I write, but I have to get ready for the funeral now.

Goodbye, Uncle Horace.