My father died very suddenly of a fatal heart attack during half time of what I understand to have been an all-time clash between Arsenal and Barcelona Football Club. Dad lived in France, in Catalonia and would have been avidly supporting Barcelona with his neighbours whilst enjoying his dearly loved ‘vin rouge’. Dealing with his death in another country and culture was incredibly challenging. Everything from finding a fax machine here so that I could authorise his body to leave his house, to the language barrier and so on. The day he was cremated coincided with the eruption of Mount Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland. We blamed him on the ‘dust cloud’ that then kept us stranded in France for another 10 days! Enough time for us to almost inadvertently discard his ashes in the local tip – that would’ve been appropriate as he would have loved the ‘depotoir’, which was one of his few French words! Eight months later we scattered him on Pic Neulos. He landed partly in France and partly in Spain. We were discovered by the local Gendarmerie who were guarding a listening station. Again, totally appropriate as we discovered a file with all his run-ins with the French Police!