David Denham

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dilwyn
Mr QL
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David Denham

Post by dilwyn »

I'm afraid that this morning I learned of the death of a forum member.

David Denham (dden on this forum) passed away peacefully in his sleep in mid July, following a short illness according to a message from his nephew.

David was a long time QL user, who I got to know during my time as editor of QL Today magazine. Unfortunately, I never got to meet him in person. He contributed many articles to the magazine over the years and could always be relied on to produce something to fill a blank page, sometimes at short notice. After I stood down from that role, we stayed in touch and he would sometimes send me QL software he had written to be released via my website.

He wrote quite a few software packages for the QL, including a wordsearch game, several utilities and a port of an adventure authoring system written in BASIC, which his family have kindly said can all be left in the public domain to remember him by. His nephew told me that "his QL computers clearly meant a lot to him."

David was also an occasional contributor to the QL Forum online chat at weekends, and I distinctly remember a lot of friendly leg-pulling between him, Rob, vanpeebles, XorA, Tim and I in particular. Having once made the mistake of telling us about some low alcohol beer he used to buy from a supermarket, we would always refer to him as "Mr 1%" during the inevitable banter from then on. There was also an infamous cheese toasties incident, although I don't remember enough about that to be able to tell the full story.

Living on the south coast of England, they spent much of their retirement travelling in their beloved campervan, often taking his QL system with them. He would sometimes tell us about the trips, and of the mishaps which would occur on those outings, such as when his QL flew out of an unfastened drawer or cupboard on a sharp bend, or as he put it once in QL Today, "the QL made a bid for freedom". Such was his sense of humour.

As a Welshman, I became the target of some good-natured leg-pulling after he once had a laptop stolen while he was staying somewhere in Wales, which he dealt with in his usual polite, mischievous and good humoured way by winding me up about the Welsh! Fortunately for me, the incident happened far enough away from where I live for me to be above suspicion.

He is survived by his wife. They had no children. I have sent my condolences via his nephew on behalf of myself and everyone at QL Forum. RIP dden.


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vanpeebles
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Re: David Denham

Post by vanpeebles »

Terribly sad news. He was a much loved visitor on the QL Chat, and we had some great evenings that will live long in the memory. It was always a pleasure to see him on. I think the toastie evening was when he had spent most of the day getting the kitchen spotless, and his wife with friends came home, with wine. They then started to make loads of toasties in the kitchen and got crumbs everywhere, much to his chagrin, and our amusement.

It's sad that I/we never knew he was poorly. RIP DDen, you will be very much missed, but fondly and well remembered.

On Saturday, I'll raising a toast with hopefully something a bit stronger than 1%!!!


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NormanDunbar
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Re: David Denham

Post by NormanDunbar »

:(


Why do they put lightning conductors on churches?
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