The last time I saw Bill was when I took him to lay a wreath on his wife's grave
Just before Christmas. A week later Bill was dead. Massive heart attack took him dead on cue.
From a single parent family in the 1930s, brought up above a shop, no chances offered, no respect. That was his lot.
He joined the British army as a teenager (a new word then) and toured the trouble spots of the world. He had friends.
Told me it made him grateful for the little his mum had had.
Then it was the merchant marine, skivvying on ships, he called it. Jaundice ended that.
Now in his thirties, in the radical 60s, he mended canals, heavy, itinerant work, he never shirked
Living in a caravan he told me about the rain and the snow and the hail.
But it was work. Money. He avoided irony when he spoke of the welfare state  Never had if I' d have been Irish, they'd have called me a navvy, he said.  He kept a sense of common decency intact.
There was no barrier between Bill and I. We spoke honestly. Respected each other.
He found love in late middle-age and found a form of frugality too. Guts he'd always had a-plenty.
Last thing I heard, he was wondering how to pay his TV licence  He was eighty-three.