KEITH PITMAN

Keith was a dear friend of my family. An articulate and fascinating man. He loved history, literature, discussing everything and anything. He could strip a rifle, tickle a trout from a brook where no one else could; he could build a house, heel any dog and perform amazing feats of dexterity with, as he put it, his '..murderer's hands' (They were thick-fingered and calloused. Ideal for strangulation. Or worse.). He waged constant war on the moles that dug up his garden. He'd sit perched by his kitchen window for hours, sipping tea, waiting for molesign, his tiny pink eyes scanning the lawn. Keith was a formidable man in his first 50 years, with spells labouring in Africa and Germany, but he was a more temperate one later. He chuckled deeply at my photographic portraits of him. I miss Keith.