My first real encounter of death in the family came when the phone rang in 1974 and interrupted my maths homework. I was 14 years old.

I remember the conversation vividly. After my Nan asked, rather tremulously, asked for my mum and dad (who were out) I asked if I could take a message. I hesitated before asking this as I instinctively felt there was bad news. She said: "Could you tell them that your grandad died this afternoon please?"

She burst into tears and put the phone down. So it was down to me as a 14-year-old to tell my mum her dad had died.

He's been back in my thoughts once again this week.

Born January 12 1894 he would've been 21 when he enlisted to the Middlesex Regiment eighth Battalion on April 7 1915. He was discharged on February 20 1919.

I can barely imagine the experience of catastrophic genocide that would engulfed him during those years.

The vivid words of dissenting poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon have given me a glimpse of the horror, but it was only fairly recently when I read Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks that I was even close to imagining the unimaginable.

This novel depicts with chilling realism the chaos, the confusion, the topsy-turvy morality, the bravery on all sides and the futility of the conflict.

My little boy Reggie would've been his great grandson and being born in 2007 obviously never met him.

But last Saturday, on the 11th of the 11th at 11 am Reggie and I sat silently in a house for two minutes. Being with my son somehow connected me to my grandad.

He was a devout Christian, a printer by trade, a trade unionist and like all his antecedents, a bit of a shorty.

His memory isn't defined by his service in World War I. He was an immensely warm, very funny and a very modest man who we all adored.

He was particularly good at the game shove ha'penny. It's a skill I inherited and I'm quite brilliant at. Dazzling in fact.

What a shame absolutely nobody plays it now.

I still miss him.