After becoming a complete family unit with Les by our side, the gamer came out of us both. Computer gamer to be exact. We started with the Commadore 64 with a tape deck for which Les would always be coming home with a game he had found for sale in the local news paper shop. Usually from the publisher KIXX. There was one game which Les absolutely loved on the C64, Silk Worm. He had an interest in anything related to planes and helicopters so I think this may be why he took to this particular game.  All the time that we were doing our gaming on the C64, when we went food shopping we would always go to the computer shop which is part of the shopping complex. In this shop they had advertised the Amiga 500 and Les and I were always mesmerized whatever they had playing on it and the variety of games avalible.
One year I had been asking for an Amiga for christmas. I was always told it was too expensive and we couldn't afford one. Usually I would use the time alone at home to try and find my coming christmas presents but there was never any sign of an Amiga.
On christmas morning that year, my wish was granted. Through the very hard work and saving by my mum and Les, they had managed to get one (the cartoon classics pack). I remember being completely over ther moon about it and I think Les was excited too.
From this point on Les and I became avid gamers. Les found and fell in love with the original "Wing Commander" and I would play games that were fashionable with my friends at the time. We had quite the library of games in the end. Alien Breed was the one that we would both play with equal interest. As you know, technology grows very quickly and it soon became obvious that the Amiga was losing it's grip on the market and that the PC was moving ahead. We bought one PC, a 386 with 640kb RAM which I guess was our jumping off point in to the PC gaming world. It would run very few games but we were both learning how to use one at the time so when it finally came time to buy a current generation PC (current for the time) we knew exactly what we wanted. The selling point we were most interested in was : Can it run Wing Commander 3? but it had more than just the ability to play games, it could be used by my mum for her studying too.
The first "New" PC we bought was a Pentium 75 with 4MB of EDO. Which quickly got upgraded to a Pentium 90 with 8MB as fifa soccer required more RAM.
Before leaving the UK, the last spec I remember the system at was a Pentium 133 with 8MB EDO and a 3DFX card. Throughout all the years that I was away, Les's interest in gaming grew enormously. Partly because of his friend "Steve" who always had the lastest tech and games but also because of Les's enthusiasm for PC gaming.

Once I returned to the UK in 2006, Les had aquired a high end system, I believe he was using an Nvidia 9800 at the time (can't conirm that). That card was sat on a gaming level motherboard with particularly expensive RAM and I think it was an Athlon 64 3000. Very high end for 2006. He had become an avid fan of the game Crysis and was pretty good at it to say the least. Crysis 2 was added to the list as soon as he had upgraded the hardware a little. Of course he played more than just that one game, but it's the one I can remember him being adept at playing online.

I was in the UK for the next 5 years and I advised him on what upgrades he would need to run what games. The final setup I remeber was an SLi setup and Les seemed to be very happy with the results.
Even though I had moved out of the UK again, Les and I would chat on skype and he would often mention the battlefield games so I think he may have started Battlefield 3.

Les was a true computer gamer, through and through. He never even picked up a console controller, his interest was in PC gaming only. I am forever in appreciation for Les's following the PC rather than console. It is now my career choice and probably will be for years to come. If Les hadn't have become a PC enthusiast, I would probably have ended up in a dead end job with no enthusiasm for future promotions. I owe him my life in this respect.

Les first met my mother at school in their teens. I remember Les saying that he had a dog at the time called Rex, whenever Les went to kiss my mum, Rex would get inbetween them. Regardless of Rex's antics, they maintained a relationship up until the end of their school lives. After school was over, Les enrolled in the RAF and my mother went on to study for her future career as a nurse. Some years passed,  in which my mother met somebody else thinking that she would never see Les again. She had 2 children, my sister and I, and continued to study. Eventually my mother left my blood related father, taking my sister and I with her, back to her home town in scunthorpe. I am not sure how long after the move until they reunited but in the end they did. And spent the rest of their lives together from that day on. 

Les took my sister and I on as his own children, he had always loved my mother, so much so that he didn't even have to think about my sister and I being bundled in with my mum. He accepted us both as his own children without a single negative thought about it. Am I a believer in destiny? Yes I am. Too many events in my own life seemed destined to happen and which have brought me to where I am now. Les and my Mum were destined to be together. And together they stayed , right up until his last breath at 3am on the 27th of January 2016. When he passed away, with my mother and sister holding his hands right up until he took his last breath, peacefully, during sleep. 

My first memories of les being with my mum, that I can fully recall, are when they lved in scunthorpe in their own property.  Les had come home from somewhere and he had bought my sister and I a bicycle each. It may of been on a whim that he did this or it may have been christmas, I was too young to remember things like important dates. All my sister and I knew is that every year, 2 times a year, you get presents. Some from Santa and some from your parents on your birthday.  I don't think it was my birthday. I think he wanted us to love him and we do.

There are some blurry memories I have of our scunthorpe life. Les had a very nice camera collection and loved photography. He also had a large, VHS tape video camera with which he filmed our sports days and other events. He would always be telling us about his time in the RAF as a fire chief too, and had a collection of airplane paintings along with a wooden plaque engraved with his name and his service to the UK.

Les and my Mother encouraged us through childhood and taught my sister and I the do's and don'ts about life. I have no recollection of him getting particularly angry about anything. If we did something wrong, he would passively tell us that it was wrong without the use of force or raising his voice.

Les's levelheadedness and passive nature made him a very likeable person. He got along with everyone he met and nobody had a bad word to say about him.

Knowing that he had two kids to support, he went to work in the UK doing various jobs such as truck driving, forklift driving and so on and  gosh was he a hard worker. No matter how hard I try to think about it, I can't come up with an occasion when Les took a day off work sick. I believe he had an immaculate work record and I believe he did this because he wanted to support his new family as best he could and also because he just loved work.

Les's hard work and my Mother becoming a fully fledged nurse allowed for some of the most memorable holidays I have ever been on. Les and my Mum took us camping, caravaning and on holidays to various other countries. I will always remember those times and the fun we had.

We had the best Dad possible through our childhood and for this, I am humberly greatful.