Funny out random events can be connected in ways you wouldn't think possible.

This weekend, Sunday to be precise, would have been Nigel's 44th birthday. Had he lived he would no doubt have been involved with Wembley's construction still, although if he had anything to do with it it would have been finished by now, and looking forward to the Cup Final v Liverpool. As things have turned out, he's no longer with us, Wembley isn't finished and Darryl will be going to Cardiff for our biggest game in 26 years without his Dad.

I didn't mention it was his birthday until we sat down for our evening meal, I know Nathalie wouldn't remember the date of her uncle's brthday and to be honest I wouldn't have expected Janis to - she might have known him for more than twenty years but you tend to remember birthdays of your family rather than the one you marry into.

His birthday and Easter are really hard, Easter more so because it was at that time in 2004 that he nearly died and I made the 100 mile dash to the west London hospital in one hour twenty minutes. I did joke with him afterwards that if I had have been stopped for speeding I would have had a very original excuse.

I remember him lying there in the Intensive Care Unit connected to all these machines, one of the machines keeping him alive was one of only two outside of the U.S.A. I remember the surgeon taking me and Karon (my sister in-law) into a side room and explaining that we had an hour to make a decision whether or not to operate to try and save his life.

An hour!

It took us about two seconds, as soon as he finished speaking I said "There isn't a choice."

Before Nigel has decided whether or not to go into hospital to have the cancer removed he had talked to me on the phone about his worries, his concerns. He didn't want to be a burden on his family, he didn't want Darryl to have to push him around in a wheelchair, or for Laura to be embarrassed by her Dad. It was funny, poignant and touching. Nigel was always the sort of person whose attitude is "this is me, if you don't like it fuck off," now he was worrying about what the people who loved him most were going to think.

He had the operation but then contracted MRSA, not once but twice and spent 53 days in ITC which is a record for the Brompton Hospital. I remember taking a day off work in May 2004 to go and visit him, when I arrived he was in so much pain that he had to have a morphine injection and I only saw him for about ten minutes. I went back and saw him a week later, on Cup Final Day, Darryl was going to sit with him and watch Manchester United play Millwall - again a strange choice for two West Ham supporters - but you only get one chance with life and anytime spent with a loved one is time to be grasped and cherished.

Two years on from that Saturday in May it's not diificult to think of him, to remember the good times - the games of football that lasted all afternoon, the arguments about Damon Hill winning the F1 Championship, the drinks at Mudeford Quay in 2002 when Nathalie had her eighth birthday party and Nigel, Darryl and myself went to the pub. Sitting in the sunshine, seagulls buzzing overhead, a pint or two of Ringwood Best, discussing West Ham, work, doing the electrics for the outside lights at home.

He looked so happy that day, the future as much a foreign country as the past.

It's eighteen months since his death and I still can't talk to Karon, it seems a shitty thing really but I know that she doesn't need my tears on the phone and I know that that's what it will come to.