197A.
I hope you don't mind, but I have two PaDs today. I have noticed that there is a trend whereby some people are putting two or more photos on the same page. This practice does not bother me in the least - people pay for their space, and they can do what they want with it. But then, I have broadband, so I don't have to wait for the pages to load. To the point. Rather than put the two pictures on the same page, I have put them up separately - one here in the rightful place, and the other in my Bitzan Peesiz gallery. No matter - it is still a PaD, and will be counted by me as such, and will be transferred to my Pad gallery later on today. Why two pictures? I hear you ask. Well, there are two things I need to record today, and I couldn't put them in the same picture, for reasons that should be quite obvious. Firstly, had my Dad been alive today, he would be celebrating his 61st birthday. Unfortunately, and for reasons that I will not go into, he took his own life in April 1993, at the age of 49. My Dad's name was Leslie Anthony Lloyd Jones, and everyone called him Les. He was a hard worker, keeping down two practically full-time jobs, just to make sure that we wanted for nothing. He left school to do his national service, where he served in West Berlin when the wall was being built, and then later in Cyprus as part of the UN Peacekeeping Force. It was in Cyprus that he had his brush with death - he fell asleep on the beach and, as well as getting sun-stroke, he was badly sunburned. His wife left him when my sister and I were very young, so my Dad got a compassionate discharge from the army and returned to Rothesay where he got a job as a telephone engineer. I never dreamt that he would die so young, so I took him for granted, and didn't see him as much as I should have. I miss him terribly.

Click "Kiss my sweet soft Scottish arse" for my alternative PaD.