Long-standing readers of my blog will know that whenever we go to Anglesey, we visit the wonderful antique shop run by Merfyn and Trish Jones in Castle Street, which is always full of unexpected Welsh treasures, informed by Merfyn’s shrewd eye and encyclopedic knowledge of Welsh furniture makers, as well as where to acquire them. It was as if the furniture makers of the past had been his friends, which in a way they were. He was also a fund of local information as a long-standing local councillor and, more recently, the founder of the Menai Food Festival.

Now we have heard the sad news of his death. He was diagnosed with cancer some time ago, which he bore with characteristically cynical stoicism, still surprisingly cheerful a month or so ago when I took photographs of him, knowing it was likely to be the last time we would see him:-