Holy Cross Church Binsted Hampshire, Saturday 24 July 2004

Ursula Pretzlik

When Nick died I didn't just lose my husband, I also lost my best friend, my soul mate and the father of my children. Nick and I spent 36 years together - and throughout all that time, we chatted and planned endlessly, no matter how far apart or how busy we were. And that Saturday night - the 10 July - was absolutely typical.

I was working in a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. I had had a wonderful but hot and busy day, taking 125 children to play in a nearby river. So I was looking forward to a quiet night. But first I rang Nick, who had stayed in London to train for the Peace Cycle to Jerusalem, which he would have embarked upon in three weeks time.

We had one of our long debriefs. He seemed to be having a ball catching up with family and friends while I was away. And he told me how well and lovely he had found his sister, Jackie, the day before and what a nice cup of coffee he had also had with his father. Nick said he was so very proud of Luke and was pleased to be able to tell me that Luke had never been better - Rafiki, Luke's dog, of course got a mention - and Charlie's family was doing well too. He told me he was looking forward to seeing our grandson Ernest at bathtime on Tuesday - already his 2nd birthday.

We even made plans to come to Beirut together next summer. We were going to raise enough money for the kindergarten in the camp to be able to buy Plasticine and crayons as well as little chairs and tables.

We must have chatted for about 45 minutes. Nick spoke of his love for his family and for me - and I told him I loved him too, and said how much I was looking forward to seeing him. I then fell into a deep sleep.

Six hours later the loud buzz of my mobile woke me - it was Charlie on the phone. Nick had just died from heart failure in our bedroom at home. Atef, a friend who is staying with us had heard him fall and, with a neighbour, had managed to summon help immediately. But it was no good.

We now know that this was exactly the way Nick wanted to die. Only a few hours earlier, he had been with his father discussing an old friend who had had to suffer a long illness before dying recently. Nick said he hoped that when his time came he could go quietly and suddenly at home in his sleep. I am quite certain he never meant it all to come about that weekend. But we do know that he didn't suffer for a moment. He slipped away quietly, leaving us speechless and gasping for air.

I met Nick on a blind date on Thursday 13 June 1968 - my 21st birthday. The matchmakers have remained dear friends and are here today. It was love at first sight. There he was - a rather spoilt but dashing young gentleman who sent red roses by the dozen and thought that buying a house where we did just off High Street Kensington was very much the wrong side of Barkers. And there was me, an outspoken, down-to-earth Swiss miss. How could I not fall for Nick's smile and his confidence, his blue eyes and his ability to get a table anywhere?

I will miss this young frivolous man who turned into a loving husband, father and grandfather. I will miss discussing the news with him. I will miss our adventures to places like the Yemen, Syria and Patagonia. I will miss the encouragement he gave me first in my studies and then in my work. I imagine that I will miss him a lot in the days, weeks and years to come - but I will remain grateful for the time that we did have together.

Charlie Pretzlik

It is quite incredible - if only to judge from the diversity of people here today - to think how many different areas of life and how many different parts of the world Dad touched.

He was born in West Sussex to an RAF pilot who flew night-fighters in World War II and to a beautiful and adventurous Scots mother. He was the youngest of three, after Simon, and his sister Jackie. At eight, Dad was sent off to prep school at Ludgrove and then to Eton where the physique that he was to retain for the rest of his life was evidence that he was perhaps more athletic than bookish. His easy charm made him a popular boy but it was his membership of Pop and the Eton XI cricket team that to this day give him something akin to hero-status among some of his old pals.

Dad made some very dear friends at Eton - some of whom are here today and remain close friends of Mum's, Luke's and mine. But Dad was never one of those men who reminisce romantically about their school days.

For that reason I had to dig around a bit in my grandfather's papers to find details of where he made most impact in his youth. And that was undoubtedly in cricket. He first came to public attention as a schoolboy when he took just 95 minutes to score 90 not out against the Combined Services at Lord's. And, in the words of the Daily Telegraph, he clearly showed outstanding promise. Not long afterwards, the same newspaper reported how a 19-year-old Nicholas Pretzlik had scored 119 runs for Jim Swanton's Commonwealth XI in a one-day match at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club. You can get a sense of the class of sportsman that Dad was if I also tell you that he shared the pitch with former Australian test captain Richie Benaud and Gary Sobers, then the best all-rounder in the game. A few days later, the Telegraph was reporting from Hong Kong how Pretzlik had sent "successive balls rattling among the traffic outside the new Hilton Hotel".

Understandably, many had high hopes for Dad's cricketing career. But in the end, it went nowhere - and for the strangest of reasons. He had a brief spell in county cricket, representing Hampshire in (I think) two matches, but then someone stole his kit out of the back of his E-Type. And that was that. For reasons Dad himself could never explain, he simply never bothered to replace what had been stolen. As a result Luke and I never saw him play. However, it is worth saying that a couple of years ago, cricket came in extremely handy again when it gave him just the chat he needed to negotiate and charm his way through a couple of particularly barbarous check-points in northern Pakistan.

Yet, Dad's real sporting love - in fact the only sport that he developed throughout his life - was skiing. He was incredibly brave and aggressive downhill and was the only foreigner to have joined the Swiss ski club. But he never took racing quite seriously enough to become really good at it, although he was briefly English ski jumping champion at seventeen.

Skiing became much more than a sport to Dad. Shortly after Luke and I were born - in fact really very shortly afterwards - he had us on skis and would sit out of sight in the café in Kitzbuehl sucking his way through fistfuls of cigarettes as his little three and five-year-old ploughed up an down a nursery slope which, to the naked eye, seemed harmlessly horizontal.

Both Luke and I spent an enormous amount of time on the slopes with Dad. As he developed his mountaincraft skills and took to touring in a big way, the three of us explored the small peaks around Davos and Klosters together. Dad never quite lived down the day he made us walk up the main mountain on skins because he thought the queue for the cable car was too long. But, like him, we enjoyed the walking up as much as the skiing down. He just loved being on skis, whatever the weather - and the further away from other people and their tracks the better. For Luke and me, Dad was our favourite skiing companion. We watched and copied the way he attacked steep slopes and tricky snow - somehow he always seemed so elegant and in control.

Dad's deep love for the mountains extended far beyond skiing, though. As a young man he enjoyed climbing over the Alps and the Himalayas, and, more recently, the Andes, with friends, some of whom are here today, and sometimes with Luke and me. Twice, I think, he saw the other side of 22,000 ft, which is real high altitude. He always picked a good route in the mountains but his knots left a lot to be desired and were a source of great amusement to anyone who climbed with him.

However, I think the alpine pursuit he enjoyed most of all was walking with Mum on the summer slopes of eastern Switzerland. He would prepare delicious packed lunches and they would head off in search of lovely streams, little lakes, chamoix, steinbock and meadows carpeted with flowers. Having found them - it has to be said - he liked to admire the view but usually with one eye on the clock. He liked pressing on to the top, firmly in the belief that the steepest, highest ascent could be diminished by, as he always said, just putting one foot in front of the other.

Dad also loved tennis but the fun for him was at least as much about watching and teaching his sons - and especially my talented brother - as it was about playing himself.

It is not so usual these days to be able to say - and I know it will make Mum, rightly, very proud to hear this - that most of my memories of Dad are ones that include her, too. The junior tennis tournaments, walking in Switzerland or Scotland, travelling in Kenya, skiing in Klosters - we did all of it together. They came together to visit Luke and me at university, or when I was living in New York; and, because Luke and I were at day school in London, we all saw each other every day for breakfast and supper.

This close contact with Dad continued into Luke and my adult life. For Luke, especially, it has been an immense and essential source of strength. As he struggled with his health, Dad always, always had time for Luke. When what Luke needed was someone to listen, Dad was there. When Luke needed someone to fight his corner with the hospital authorities, again, Dad was there. And Dad was profoundly relieved in recent months to see how much Luke's health had improved.

I, too, drew immense encouragement and inspiration from Dad. He taught me to attack life - its opportunities as well as it challenges - with the same determination and optimism that he brought to a difficult slope on skis. When, as a school-leaver, I wanted to go to Israel and the Occupied Territories to work with the Bedouin during the first uprising, Dad was nervous. He had not yet come to the political views that we all know he came to hold. But he never stopped me: instead he had the organisation I was working for checked out and, having satisfied himself that I was not getting myself into serious trouble, he set about reading the history of Israel and Palestine. I won't dwell just now or where that took him, or on the work he did in that region, because some friends of Dad's are going to say something about it in a minute. All I will say is that Luke, Mum and I are more proud of the humanity and energy that he displayed towards the Palestinian cause than we can say. I now regret not having told him so more clearly while I still could.

Some parents might get nervous at seeing their children risk a good education on uncertain prospects in journalism. They direct their children into the law or accountancy. But not Dad. He did what he could to help me get started. And then he read everything I wrote and would often ring me to say how much he had enjoyed that morning's paper.

For me it is amazing to think that a man who spent his youth on the cricket pitch, improving his golf handicap or driving fast cars should have ended up so open to the world and the people around him, as well as such a wonderful family man. And yet, as his life and his view of the world evolved he never turned his back on the past and his old friends. He always remained deeply, deeply fond of a huge number of close and wonderful friends.

Mum wouldn't say this but I can. She gave Dad the strength, the encouragement and - importantly - the space to look within himself, to look at the world through his own eyes. But it was also Dad's genius to fall in love with this beautiful but (as Mum herself put it) rather outspoken and down-to-earth Swiss fashion graduate.

Without Mum, he might never have made the second most important decision of his life: to retire at the age of 49. He had spent nearly 30 successful years in the paper trade but the business had become very stressful and he had begun to have a few problems with his heart and his back. On one occasion he blacked out three times on the motorway. So, having got the business on an even keel, he walked out of the office, threw his suit and shoes in a bin and headed off to South America for a year.

He gave himself a budget of $15-a-day and proceeded to walk, cycle and hitch his way down through Argentina to the very south of Patagonia, back up through Chile, and on to Bolivia, Peru and then Brazil. Mum, Luke and I joined him for brief spells but we reckon Dad covered about 10,000km, mostly under his own steam. Every night he lay in his tiny tent recording tapes or writing letters to Mum, which told of the people, animals and landscapes he had seen, and how profoundly they were affecting him. Dad would never have seen it this way, but the journey - usually by himself or with the very poor - seems to have been a kind of pilgrimage that marked the end of one life and the beginning of another, very different one. He didn't end up in any particular shrine and he didn't think a great deal of the Madonnas that he came across. He came to a different sort of place, within himself, rich in humanity and compassion. Again, he would never have seen it this way, but it seems to me that by the time he died he had chosen a life and a course that Christian and other religious teachings encourage us all to choose.

When Dad came back he ditched the Telegraph for the Indie and the Observer and now whizzed around everywhere in a little yellow Fiat Cinquecento. Much more importantly, though, he and Mum agreed to reverse roles. While still working, Dad had encouraged Mum to resume her studies, beginning with o'levels and working right up to her PhD. Now, they agreed, he would stay at home and she would go out and pursue the academic career that she loved. The result was both magnificent and sometimes very funny - for, as you know, Dad never did anything by halves. He became really quite an accomplished cook, borrowing recipes from neighbouring restaurants, and he kept the house in amazing order. He was often found hoovering and polishing door handles while the rest of the house was still fast asleep. When Dad's window cleaner came round to do our windows he asked whether I was like my Dad and would follow him around closely with a damp cloth, wiping his footprints off the window sills as he went. Dad could also be a little impatient. He could hardly wait for us to stop eating before he had to jump up and clear the table. He could rip saucers from under cups and plates from under noses if you weren't quick.

Dad never really passed his tidy gene on to Luke or me but you may be comforted to hear that it lives on in Ernest, whom Dad taught to wield a dustpan and brush and who, for the last fortnight has been sponging down the bathroom tiles while saying "papa, papa".

In fact, Dad lives on in many ways. He is there in the love and friendship that exists between those who were close to him. He lives on in the lives led by those whom he was able to help. He lives on in the values that he has taught us, and which we continue to try and live by.

I shall miss him not only as a father but also as my friend. I shall miss him at the top of every mountain I climb, at the bottom of every run I ski, with every turn that Ernest takes on snow, at the end of every article I write, and with every bowl of soup I eat - because Dad once made delicious pea soup and made us all laugh by saying, entirely earnestly, how marvellous it was it tasted so much of pee.

It is so upsetting to think that we will never know how much more this brave, generous and inquisitive man - whose smile could brighten up any room - would have done in this world had he been given longer.

But, then again, he packed more into his 58 years than most people who live to 100 do - and by dying now, he has sparred us all a whole load of sad memories. We will never have to remember him struggling to get his ski-boots on, unable to write at the computer, or walk along the paths above Klosters.

He can sit on his cloud knowing that he always finished his turns perfectly, no matter what the snow, and the lucky chap won't even have to go on telly now with Vanessa Feltz to explain why he is planning to go on the Peace Cycle to Jerusalem.

A couple of weeks ago, Luke, Lydia, Ernest and I were round with Mum and Dad having a lovely breakfast that Dad had cooked, and were discussing the plans for his 59th birthday, which falls on Friday. It was a long-running family joke that Dad - with his extraordinary fitness and dark hair - must eventually reach what he called "his peak". He always said he was getting there, but it was still some way off.

That morning, though, he laughed. He said: "You know, I think this really is it. I think I may - at last - be reaching my peak."

Certainly, with all the training for his cycle ride, he had never felt fitter. Certainly, he had done more good in the world - both at home and in the Middle East - than most of us will ever do. And as Mum's last conversation with him shows, he had never been more at peace with the people around him.

I think we can say he definitely reached his peak.