In early June, Roger [Deakin] called to ask if I would act as his literary executor.  I said I would. … He died soon afterwards.  The coffin he lay in had a wreath of oak leaves on its lid.  Just before it glided through the velvet curtains and into the cremating flames, Loudon Wainwright’s ‘The Swimming Song’ was played, full of hope and loss.  It brought me to shuddering tears that day, and whenever it pops up now and then out of the thousand songs on my phone, it still stops me short like a punch to the chest.