FOR all my life, my eldest brother, ‘our Alf’, has been there, solid, quiet and reliable.

He was not like our Tom and me, who were more than a bit frivolous, fun loving, and a bit careless, even.

On Friday all the family gathered to say our last goodbyes to Alf; I was going to say ‘sadly’, but he’d had a good wife, a good son and a good long life and as he once said to me “Who could ask for anything more?”, I won’t add that.

Our Tom and I were close, as we were only a couple of years apart, while our Alf was nine years older than me, so this put us in completely different stages while we were growing up.

He was out working, contributing to the household, and going dancing.

Dancing! Our Tom and I used to snigger about that, we just couldn’t believe it; boys, nearly men, dancing!

Of course you must remember this was before television., so We had never seen ballroom dancing and at that time the only dancing I had seen was around a Maypole.

Tom and I were still playing with our toys. He with his soldiers, toy fort and the very realistic trenches that my dad had made, exact replicas of the ones that he had fought in during the First World War.

In these trenches were carefully placed, broken toy soldiers, because dad had carefully explained to us that “even though we had won the war, not all of the soldiers came home”.

While Tom played war games, I would be dressing Mary Ann my beloved doll – while Alfred was getting ready to go out – dancing.

And then came the big day when, after my mum had cleaned the house to a peak of sparkling perfection, our Alfred brought Madge, his girlfriend, home to tea.

She was lovely and was accepted immediately and I think my mum was somewhat amazed at his good taste.

But I was very pleased – as I got a brand new outfit for the wedding.