Shane and I lived with Graham & Nikki for about six months, until we were able to find a place of our own. During our time in the Rigby household, Graham dragged Shane into helping with a couple of projects that will always bring a smile to our faces when we reminisce about them. Graham loved to barbeque, He should have been a Canadian, which is where Shane & live now with our family, they BBQ in all seasons, they just sweep the freshly laid snow off the top of the BBQ lid and fire it up. Graham did do some amazing creations on the grill, but I think he always felt as though his pyre should be grander. So Graham came up with a plan. Being Graham he drew up solid plans for what he intended, and although Nikki had been hesitant, once she saw the initial plans in black and white, even she agreed that it would be a great feature in the garden. So with the help of Shane, they started to dig the foundations to the project. This came in an ‘L’ shape and would be two brick built rectangular plant holders. The barbeque would be housed in front one of the planters. The preparations spread over a three or four week period, but they worked hard and even caught the sun badly on there arms and lower backs where they were bent over digging, and laying bricks. When the project got to the point that Graham had shown to Nikki, he decided that it needed a little something extra, like one side of the planter continuing up so that any trailing plant could climb up the wall giving a splash of colour during the sunny months they would spend out in the garden. So reluctantly Nikki agreed. With more grandeur images in Grahams mind he continued to build with the help of Shane. Eventually the wall probably stopped at around 5ft high. But Graham was not finished. The BBQ was the centre piece of this whole venture and he insisted that maybe the structure could do with a chimney. Exasperated, Nikki could only stand watch silently as the finale of the mission was finally completed. Graham loved his homage to grilling. He planted highly scented flowers in the allocated places and stood out in the garden many evenings with a glass of wine admiring his handiwork. I loved the passion and dedication showed to his project, but it didn’t matter how many flowers you threw at it, it was an unsaid agreement all round that it was actually quite ugly. However, Graham was not discouraged, he spent many hours outside grilling and concocting different dishes, if we were invited for lunch, or dinner, you could guarantee that one dish would be on the BBQ. He even cooked on it on Christmas Day! But I think one of the funniest episodes was one day, a friend of Chris’s came round to the house and was a little upset. Graham not unusually was out cooking offerings on the grill and could see the friend was upset and inquired why. “My pet rabbit died yesterday and I’m still sad about it.” Graham pondered on this for a short while, obviously chewing over what he had said. “That’s a shame,” there was a pause, and with a complete pan face, “Can we cook it?” Shane who had standing outside keeping Graham company, sprayed red wine across the garden so he didn’t choke on it. Shane turned on his heel and ran indoors and burst into laughter. Luckily the boy was so caught up in his loss that he didn’t understand what just happened.