(An homage to a colleague and a gentleman for Remembrance Week)

“All the girls like Dick” he used to say, as if it were the best joke in the world.  He’d only say it to us blokes in his office though, not to the girls.  He was too much of a gentleman for that.

And they did.  They used to jostle for the prize of coming down to our office to do his typing – my wife included.  He’d greet them warmly, usher them to a chair, told them how nice they looked, put his arm round them; sometimes kiss their hand.  Stuff which today would be looked on as at best inappropriate and probably as sexual harassment.

But there wasn’t a scintilla of sexuality in it, on either party’s behalf.  He was simply an old gentleman and everyone’s favourite uncle.

I attended his funeral a couple of years ago.  The church was packed to the rafters, mostly with old RAF chums.  Dick had been a bomber pilot in the war and had been shot down, spending most of his service treated rather badly in a POW camp.

But there was a smattering of some of the old typing pool girls there; no longer young women but who had fond enough memories of him to pay their respects to their favourite uncle.

It’s rather sad that the world has become a seedier and more suspicious place.

Indeed, all the girls like Dick.