Who is that stranger in my father’s bed? Those sunken eyes The concave cheeks Salted with stubble The thinned grey hair Plastered to a narrow skull. I have lost the man I loved. In truth it had been a long journey To this resting place. A slow stepping backwards As memory stuttered and stalled And confusion dampened The flares of anger That made strangers of us both.

Thanks to the paucity of my education and cultural life I have come late to Isaiah Berlin, the noted philosopher and historian of ideas whose thinking provided such a guiding light to the 20th Century. But I’m definitely a fan now. I’d heard the name, of course, but would have been hard-pressed to tell you why he was well-known.

I’ve reached that age where my eye is drawn to the obituary column every time I open the newspaper. It hasn’t been a conscious move but, having arrived at my fiftieth year, I am increasingly aware of the hopes of youth shedding and floating away, like leaves from a tree, and find myself more often looking back over the road now travelled than peering into the future at the way ahead.