No, dad was never an ardent phone user, not at all. It was always mum who used to call me when I was overseas, never dad. I never even questioned it; why would I want to talk to him? And when the calls went in the other direction it was often dad who answered - 'Don Pritchard speaking!' - but he would immediately pass the phone over to mum.

His phone manner has become noticeably less abrupt with the years. He once had a habit of shouting, often repeated key phrases or numbers at a mind-numbingly slow rate to make sure you heard them correctly (this was presumably a legacy of the war, when clear radio communication was a matter of life and death). Now he usually starts his calls with a clearing of the throat, a couple of false starts, then a fragmentary excursion around the subject in question, which itself is often hidden between the dots of the conversation. The only vestige of the brusqueness of old is his signings-off, now so unexpected that he sometimes even surprises himself, and has to call back within seconds to say what he really wanted to say.

Many factors are driving these changes and nearly all of them are Alzheimer's-related. Just recently he has been letting the recognition of the growing clouds around him get a hold on him. The other day in his bedroom, which seems to be where he and I have our deepest conversations, he said 'I think I'm turning into a waste of space. I don't seem to be any use to anyone these days.' He had just come back from mum's bedroom, and another failed attempt to get her out of bed. Even the standard promise of a cup of tea had not worked. I wonder if he senses that their days together are numbered, and cannot bear the thought that she is going to spend them semi-comatose while he is sitting alone on the sofa with no-one to talk to and nothing to do? He wants company, and none of us can or will give him all that he needs. Hence the phone calls, hence the indirect and oblique nature of their subject matter, rarely starting off as a request for company, but rarely ending up as anything else. Long long gone are the days when he could shout up to the top of the garden, where Greg and I were playing in the mud, 'I want you two inside right now!' In fact, in those days it was not dad who ever really cared where we were, it was always mum who attempted to manage the opposed goals of getting us out of the house to play and keeping us clean at the same time.

Now the phone is the first resort in the face of any problem, any doubt. We ought to be thankful for this, as the alternative would be a real mess. If dad thought that he was alone and had to fix everything for himself it would soon get very ugly over there. Very ugly indeed.