You know when you run into really hilarious old British men, and your first instinct is that it's a trap and hilarious old British men don't really exist, but then you think, "he is real!" and it's beautiful but sad too because they don't make them like that anymore? Well it's certain now. My great Uncle Dave is gone. And so it goes.

I don't have details, really. He was driving and then there were two 18-year-olds in a car. In a small town in the English countryside, where the roads are windy and unlit, where there are no buses, and where the pubs aren't walking distance from anywhere, I wonder if this sort of thing happens all the time.

And now I'm looking all over Google images for a shot of the young Austin Powers you might have seen in Austin Powers 3: Goldmember. Since I don't have any photos of him here, have a look at that movie sometime, and when you see the young little Austin Powers on screen, that's my Uncle Dave. He flew planes in World War II, you know.

It's good, though, that it happened this way. No doubt he was driving somewhere fun to go flirt with the waitresses. Even in his late eighties, he could charm a woman just by explaining that they're called aubergines at home. He always believed in Life. And he was pronounced dead at the scene. There wasn't any time to think about his life as something ended, it just was.

I'll miss you Uncle Dave. You broke the mold on your way out.

The italian word for today is zio. It means uncle.