I want to begin by saying thank you to everyone for being here as we celebrate together the life of my father Richard. Thank you for being here, and thank you too to all those who are joining us virtually today. I think Daddy would have loved the idea of being live streamed! 

Richard touched the lives of so many people and it is wonderful to be able to share this moment with you all today. It’s a great honour for me to attempt to speak for all of us - particularly my mother Katharine and my sisters Eleanor and Caroline - but for everyone here today too - and try to put into words what Richard meant to us all. 

Daddy was a great marker of anniversaries, feast days and milestones, and I think he would have been delighted by the fact that today, on June 25th, exactly six months away from Christmas Day, we are coming together to mourn him and celebrate him. 25 . 6 . 25 - the kind of beautiful, symmetrical, aesthetically pleasing date he would have loved to write on a marmalade label or a birthday envelope. A very Richard-y date. He would have loved to be here - he would have loved the occasion of it - he would have loved the beauty of it - he would have loved to catch up with all the friends and family who are here today.

‘What will survive of us is Love’ Larkin wrote - and for so many of us what we will most remember of Richard was his love: his love for so many aspects of the world and his love for so many people in it.

His love of his childhood - Richard grew up in the post-war years in Holland Park, West London. He used to tell the most wonderful stories about growing up with his parents Mary and Ted and with  his brother Francis and sister Olivia, happy memories of playing on the beach at Morecambe and in the garden behind his grandmother Oma’s house in Hest Bank. The children loved each other’s company and played endless games of racing demon on the nursery floor at Addison Avenue. It was in his childhood that Richard developed a love of cycling and of music. He and Francis shared bunk beds and shared both of these passions. They would regularly sing each other to sleep, with Francis working on themes and developments in his new piano concerto, and Richard improvising his violin concerto’s cadenza, until an irate parent came up and demanded that they settle down to sleep.

His love of people - at university his determination to get out and about impressed and sometimes exasperated his friends, earning him the nickname ‘Meeting people’. He remained passionate about meeting people throughout his life but also about maintaining and growing old friendships, keeping close touch with so many people from his university days, neighbours, parishioners and professional colleagues who became close friends. He was fascinated by family history too - in his teenage years he spent many days cycling to graveyards with his brother Francis to find headstones which would fill in the gaps of the family tree - which he drew up as a beautiful diagram of concentric rings going back across the generations… and in later years expended immense effort organising extended family gatherings, bringing cousins together and keeping connections strong.

His love of music - he was born into a very musical family and, like his brother and sister, began piano lessons at an early age. Richard was required to practice his scales on the violin every morning in the kitchen under the eagle eye of his mother, for the length of time it took her to stir the porridge, while his brother Francis got away with pretending to practice the piano in the sitting room upstairs! He played the violin for his whole life - including on the day he died. After retirement from the priesthood he found so many opportunities in Cambridge to keep learning and improving his fiddle playing, especially with the Richard Quartet and the Cambridge Sinfonietta. As you will all know he also adored singing - as cantor in church, in various choirs and choral societies, most notably Choir 2000 in Histon  - as well as singing incessantly at home (to his family, to the dog, and to himself) and leading the singing of rounds around the tea table at family celebrations. He played with the Sinfonietta the day before he died and on the day itself had a violin lesson. He also loved a comic song, performing Gilbert and Sullivan at university and nursing a secret love of music hall songs - nobody who heard it can forget his rendition of ‘The Body in the Bag’!

HIs love of language - Richard adored reading and writing. I have no doubt that I and many other young people  in the congregation learned to structure a sentence, a paragraph, an argument from listening to his amazing sermons week after week. He loved encountering new words and exploring their stories - pausing the conversation to reach for the dictionary or for Brewer’s Phrase and Fable - and his speech would always be playfully peppered with random, out of context fragments of Shakespeare, of the prayer book, of the bible…

His love of Cambridge - it was at University, here at Cambridge, that Richard really became himself I think. He threw himself fully into university life, cycling around the city with his T square under one arm and violin under the other. It was here that he fell in love with Katharine and made their married home together, first at 15 Victoria Street then across the road at number 21. It was here that we children were born and here at St Bene’t’s that we were christened. And here where he retired - twice - once when leaving his job as a parish priest in 2009 and a second time in January this year, on his eightieth birthday, when he hung up his surplice for good with a very memorable final eucharist at St Bene’t’s.

HIs love of beauty, of design, of elegance - learning his trade as an architect in the pre-computer aided design days of drawing boards and propelling pencils, Richard discovered a love of design and  loved things to be ‘just so’, elegant, symmetrical and always beautiful. He was a man who could make the most mundane of things - a washing up rota, a shopping list, a thank you note - into a thing of elegance and beauty. A birthday present from Daddy was always perfectly wrapped - with crisp creases, ribbon - and never, never sellotape. He loved drawing and would draw beautiful maps and plans freehand. His study drawers were a treasure trove of beautiful stationery, calligraphic pens, finetip fibre pens, coloured felt tips, propelling pencils, interesting stencils, rulers and set squares.  The drawers would be full of coloured papers, envelopes, glue sticks and stamps. A real treat for us children! But woe betide anyone who didn’t put the glue stick back! He was also thoroughly passionate about typefaces (typefaces, not fonts, please - fonts are for holy water - and always Gill Sans for choice) and moved seamlessly from using Letraset to moving into the age of desktop publishing in the 1980s.

HIs love of ritual, tradition and ceremony - naturally Richard adored the rituals of the church but there were so many home rituals too. The lighting of the candles for birthdays and Christmas and, memorably, on the advent wreath as we sang ‘O come O come Emmanuel’ around the tea table. The traditions of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - Francis remembers the precision and care with which he would arrange the Christmas table as a child, ensuring the glass swans were full of smarties and the candles on the angel chimes were just so. There is a family story that Daddy made a bit of a fuss when he went to Katharine’s parents for Christmas and there were no candles on the table! There were also the rituals around the annual marmalade making (beginning with the pilgrimage to Graham’s fruit stall on Fitzroy Street in the new year to buy Seville oranges); the rituals around grandchildren visiting (arriving presents, eye spy and shed stories); the rituals around playing games (whistling when the mah jongg wall turned the corner); even the simple rituals of making coffee and toast at breakfast time and summer pudding in July. 

HIs love of stories - Daddy loved telling stories and most of his sermons began with a story. He had an incredible memory for family stories and would tell and retell them over and over again: the story of the Oily Potatoes - the story of Miss Ware and the Christmas Sixpence - the story of the Coke Can. He had a gift for the vivid detail of a story and of tapping into a well of emotional memory which made it seem completely immediate - as if you were really there with him.

HIs love of making things. When he wasn’t drawing, writing, making music, summer pudding, wine, honey or marmalade, he would be making things in his shed.  He loved carpentry, and had an array of tools he was very proud of and a rack of beautifully alphabetised  tobacco tins full of screws, nails and bits and pieces. He made shelving, bedside cabinets and toys for children and grandchildren. Most treasured is a dolls house he made for his daughters (extended from a 2-room cottage to a 4-room mansion complete with stairs and lights!) and a lovely rocking horse for his grandson. He made a pair of stilts for Eleanor one birthday (somehow he managed to wrap them up as beautifully as ever!) One winter he took it upon himself to make us a wooden sledge which looked so much better than those cheap plastic sledges the neighbours had - although it didn’t go nearly as fast! He enjoyed teaching his children how to use tools and even as a young girl Eleanor was given a miniature toolbox to make wooden toys with Richard, using balsa wood with a miniature saw, hammer and nails.  He taught us life skills that have stood us in good stead ever since.

His love of the natural world - who can forget Richard’s enthusiasm for bees and beekeeping! He was also a passionate gardener. creating wonderful gardens in each of the Vicarages he worked from, including building a wildlife pond, growing vegetables and apples, and his proudly planted ‘herbaceous border’ in Dereham which was the stunning venue for Caroline and Chris’s wedding in 2003. In retirement he loved his regular visits to the Botanic Gardens and worked with Katharine to develop a gorgeous garden at 21 Victoria Street. On the day he died he was taking photos of flowers in the garden with Katharine, the white wisteria magnificently in bloom across the garden wall.

His love of his work - RIchard enjoyed the challenges of architecture but as we all know he found his true calling in the priesthood - and it now seems impossible to imagine him doing anything else with his life. After training at Westcott House, Richard was ordained 46 years ago yesterday, on the feast of John the Baptist, June 24th, 1979. He saw himself sometimes as inspired by John the Baptist - calling people to repentance and preparing the way of the Lord. As curate in Bromley, then parish priest at Edenbridge, Barnes and East Dereham, he threw himself fully into each parish with its different traditions, idiosyncrasies and fundraising issues. He could probably have written a book on different ways to fundraise for a new roof! He touched the lives and changed the lives of so many people.

His love of spirituality - Richard discovered his faith at Cambridge and it led him to this church and this community at St Bene’t’s. Here he first encountered the Franciscan community, making strong spiritual connections with the friars here and beginning a lifelong association with the Third Order of St Francis, as well as building a lasting link to Hilfield Friary in Dorset where we spent many happy summers camping. He loved the traditions of the church but hated stuffiness and dustiness - he loved to innovate and to try out new forms of worship and liturgy, to sing to the Lord a new song and to lead others in finding new, innovative ways to worship God. Perhaps we should not mention the blessing of the Rubik’s Cubes though! Richard was not ostentatious or precious or po-faced or pious about his faith - he lived it - it shone through him.

His love of games - Daddy had absolutely no interest in sport whatsoever but he adored games - in no particular order… racing demon, meccano, Scoop!, whist, monopoly, mah jongg, consequences, the poetry game, the conversation game, Up Jenkins, Are you there Moriarty?, Dumb Crambo, Whot, wink murder, Monopoly, scrabble, boggle, rummikub, splat the rat, solitaire, Zoom, monopoly, chess, This is a knife, 221B Baker Street, The London Game, Savez vouz passez le Tradaridara, Bop It!, Sorry!, Uno, Pieface, Avocado smash, monopoly, Dog bingo…

HIs love for his children - as a father he was always so gentle, so calming, understanding, curious without being intrusive, forgiving, interested. Perhaps my sisters might have had different experiences - but growing up he was never critical or cross with us, or pressuring us to do things in a certain way or to make a certain choice. He was always enormously supportive of us and our interests, and as our lives hit bumps and bends in the road he was always there to show us kindness and understanding. He recognised that life was hard but he always made it easier and a more joyful journey. He was always ready after the merest, most basic achievement with a beaming smile, an enthusiastic ‘well done!’, 'how absolutely wonderful! or 'you have excelled yourself!' or, better still, ‘well done, thou good and faithful servant’. 

HIs love for his grandchildren - for Dylan, Rowan, Jessica, Sam, Isabel, Daniel and Maya - always so enthusiastic about all the news from every grandchild and keenness to share their interests, the love of stories, songs, board games - making everything an adventure… 

And his love for Katharine - meeting through mutual friends at a family party; falling in love through Cambridge walks, teasels and music making; marrying the summer Katharine graduated and making a home and a family together in Victoria Street and beyond. Fifty-eight years of love, of support, of shared life together, her rock at every stage of their journey together.. 

And one more thing which so many people have mentioned in remembering Daddy: his smile. Richard smiled constantly- at all times and in all places - a smile of encouragement and support and joy  - a smile which lit up a room and made even the saddest of times, like today, a time of celebration and hope and love.

There is so much love, then, which survives of Richard, which has touched all of us and made us who we are, and will continue to inspire us as we move through life together. It has brought us all together today on this beautiful date - 25.6.25 - and it will continue to bind us together as we remember him with so much boundless love. Of course we will all miss him terribly - but today let us remember that love as we share our memories and thanks for everything he brought into our lives. Well done, thou good and faithful servant: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. And thank you, Daddy, for everything.