We never really understand why, why some are taken from us far too early and we cannot avoid knowing it and regretting it. Our grief is a wound that will only very slowly heal but our memories are bright and clear. Mick, Mel told me, was a really good bloke - he lived life fully and with a smile, a laugh, a drink and an appetite for good things. He was a doer, a man you wanted to have around you; there was a time when he had thought of becoming a chef but he did not enjoy life away from home in hotels, Mick was a family man, and after a short spell he came back to Luton where for many years he ran a successful business. This was a business that he enjoyed and that allowed him to work with his hands and his mind to put things right and during it he made a lot of friends, loyal customers, people who knew that the “Vac Shop” was OK, that if your electrical’s went wrong this was a safe place to take them for repair. He was good company especially for his children. It is not easy being a good dad in the modern world and even harder when you are running your own business, but what comes through talking to Ben is that Mick found the time: The time to go fishing, the time to take that special holiday to Florida, to spend time on the beach in Devon, when they were younger where there were buckets and spades and sand that forever got into the sandwiches so that the fidgety children had to be off at a safe distance, and of course the time to watch football together. Mick loved his football and was a lifelong Manchester United supporter, not that everyone in the family is a Man Utd person so there was opportunity for banter, rivalry, and I suppose suitable observations on the performance of Liverpool and Arsenal. Mel, as you all know worked with Mick for many years, they were close friends before they moved to Cyprus and married and they enjoyed life together there, in the warm sunshine, with their friends and family who visited, with good food, Mick could always rustle up a supper from what was in the kitchen, (he was a better cook than most) and I imagine a bottle of good wine, the match on the television and a happy evening in prospect. And when the match was won maybe then a walk with Amber, the dog, another member of the family that Mick loved so much. For you see even though there was football and fixing and fishing it was family that was Mick’s passion - his children especially. There are many rooms in my father’s house - an enormously comforting idea I always think, at once an expression of the Christian belief and hope for life hereafter, and a word picture that tells us that God has a place prepared for each one of us, specially tailored for God knows us all perfectly. Following this service there will be refreshments at the Pavilion, in Bowling Green Lane, and I sense that if Mick were here to have his say, he would want you to enjoy yourselves, to eat well and to have a glass or three in celebration of the good things even more to remember and celebrate the good times you and he had together. Amen