Where do I begin? Well there is really only one place to begin, and that is shortly after the first world war. In the bleak winter of 1919 a son was born to Jonty and Gladys Moffatt in Jarrow, County Durham. He was one of three brothers who would live through the hard times of the depression and the second world war. Jonty was a steelworker, and in the mid 20s took his family down to Middlesbrough where he had obtained a job as a galvaniser for the princely sum of 25/- a week. In North Ormesby Bill was to grow up through the deprivations of the depression, and when many of his friends would have no shoes for their feet, Bill did, even if the soles of the shoes had been cut out of an old worn out car tyre by Jonty.

It was in these early years that his love for football grew - not as a supporter but as an enthusiast who enjoyed the skill of the game. He could not bear the playing safe style which so beset the game in the 70s and 80s. He enjoyed a game that was played well, where risks were taken no matter what the outcome. Football drew him away from the old joanna that sat in their front room at home. That was one of his regrets in his later years, that he had not given more time to study the piano though he did obtain one and tried to start up again when he was old. The football continued throughout the war years, in the army and to his very last day.

He was not called up until quite late in the second world war because he was in the steelworks, and what they did there was part of the war effort. One of the jobs he did in the works was to help to build huge steel structures, rather like bridges, but clearly not bridges. They were not told what they were, just that they had to build them. There was all kind of speculation about these things in the yard, but no one knew what they were or how they were to be used. Life in the works had to be suspended however as the call came and Bill joined the RMEs (pron. ree-mees). With them he was soon to discover what these structures were, for, having been sent to Southampton, he found that they were parts for the enormous floating harbours - the Mulberry harbours - that would be so essential after D-Day. Two of these harbours were built, a British one and an American. The American one soon fell apart - was it lack of engineering skill on the part of the builders or the viscissitudes of the Channel weather? My father's thoughts on the matter could be discovered from the glint in his eye as he related this to you. His time in the army took him to the Rhine - the industrial heartland of Germany to Bielefeld, and to Antwerp. Most of the time was spent building bridges. I suspect that some of them are still standing, perhaps with the Teesside Bridge and Engineering Works emblem deftly hidden among the girders, just as it is on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

After the war he returned to the steelworks, but life was to take a different turn. He was in his late twenties and his heart was captured by Maisie who lived on the other side of Beaumont Road, and in the cold winter of 1947 they were married at the parish church in North Ormesby. They were to be disturbed soon after the nation gained a young queen by two terrible boys who would plague their lives for many years afterwards. He now had more responsibility and threw himself into his work to support and to educate us. But life was not all work, there were the days out at the seaside - Marske, Redcar, Saltburn - sometimes further afield. He would run into the North Sea as easily as a penguin jumps into the Antarctic Ocean. I could never understand how he did it. And there were the bonfire parties - times with the cousins - oh so many cousins at times that there was nowhere to sit. We moved a couple of times and he went up into the office off the shop floor. No longer a plater, he became responsible for the estimation of materials and costs on jobs. Then British Steel took over, and in time the opportunity came for early retirement. Dad took that, then they moved from the frozen north to balmy Lincolnshire - warm wet summers, cold wet winters - following our uncle Vin. It was here that his energies were taken up with the gardens and handiwork.

They visited us in London, it was easier to do that from Lincolnshire than Middlesbrough, but there were conditions attached! We had to have work to do. Dad was not prepared to sit around doing nothing. He was an energetic man, and would not be idle. Even as recently as four years ago he was building sheds with me putting enormous 10' by 5' pieces of roof on. I came home one day to find he had moved one of ours. I remarked to someone that at if at 60 I have half the energy and strength that he had at 83 I should be 3 happy. At 83 he was a stronger man than I am at 53.

Now to sum up there were at least three things that he inherited from his father - his wife might say there were more, but de mortuis nil nisi bonum:

• a life in the steelworks - he only ever worked in one place - the steelworks. He served them for about 44 years (to 60) and drew his pension for 27.
• a love of the garden
• a way with his hands.

His father had an allotment, in which he had to work, and so too did his sons though John and I probably played more than worked! It must have been here that his love of the garden began. What a contrast it was to the noise of the steelworks. His father's use of the allotment was to produce vegetables for the family to eat and for sale, and for many years dad did grow fruit and vegetables in his own garden, but gradually they made way for more and more flowers and shrubs, ornamental features, ponds and in his later years trees - two oaks, an ash, others I do not recall, and a eucalyptus which now towers over everything around it. He knew his gardens as every gardener should, where each plant was and what it was called. He had plans and drawings which he kept up to date. He had evidently been working on the them the day before he died for his barrow was in the shed with the days weeding, he had not been well enough to empty it, and there beside it his plans and pencils.

Robert reminded mother and me that in John 15 Jesus tells us that he is the vine, and his father is the vine-dresser: 'Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit he prunes that it may produce more.' If you are a gardener you will understand this: the gardener is good to his garden, and our Father in heaven is good to his people. But if you are not - sometimes when our parents were staying with us I would come home from work, look around the garden and wonder where it had all gone (so did Chris). But the gardener had been at work. Dad had cut back the growth as he saw fit. The garden appeared to suffer a setback, but the reality was that it was all the better for pruning that it had suffered. It was not only the garden that he pruned - his two sons had to learn what it was to be pruned by him. How grateful we are for the training he gave us.

Perhaps almost more than anything else, though I remember dad for the way he used his hands. If we look at the houses which the Egyptians and Romans built for themselves and how they decorated the walls, well how different ours - the wall paper will not last as long as their decorations did - but look more carefully where our dad lived. Underneath that wall paper or paint you may find detailed plans for the outhouse that he built showing the joints, the positions of the screws and bolts, all drawn with great precision. I tried to count how many 'sheds' dad has made over the years, but gave up after counting ten. By sheds I mean anything from a garden shed to a conservatory. Just as he worked with steel in the works, he worked in wood and with bricks and mortar at home. His was meticulous in his work. Planning was obligatory. Preparation was essential. He once cut the wood for a shed, put the four walls together inside the house, then put the whole thing up outside everything going together just as it ought. He would spend hours levelling the ground making sure everything was just right - even in his last weeks he planned to move one of his sheds, and had prepared the ground, marked the relevant points finding his levels in readiness for the move. I saw what he could do with his hands and especially with wood, and learned to do the same. I sometimes wonder whether Jesus did that as he watched his father the carpenter Joseph.

I shall miss dad, just as my brother John, his grandchildren, Louise, Paul, Johnathan, Kate, Asiah and Peter will. Each one will miss him for something different. Each one will have special memories which will be treasured. I wish we had time to speak about all the good things that he meant to us but there is not. My words have been very inadequate. We loved him and miss him. God was good to give him to us for such a long time. Mother reminded me of that. Three score years and ten, or if by reason of stength four score, but God gave him and us seven more than that.

Mother will miss him of course more than we. Her life was bound up with his for sixty years or more. May God give her grace to sustain her in her loss.

Thank you for listening