Although he was the younger man, I feel his loss more like that of a father. How often, coming upon something interesting, does one think “I must ask the Old Man about that”, only to be struck a few seconds later by the dull realisation that it is far, far too late to do so. So it is with Fabio. In the last few days I have frequently caught myself thinking “I must get Fabio’s views on that”, then sadly remembered.

I would speak to him almost every day as his co-umpire in Imperium, and it is still difficult to realise that that will never happen again. As others have remarked, it is strange to feel such grief for someone one had never met (or had any expectation of meeting), and whose face one had never seen. That one does feel that way is a mark of the man’s impact on us all. He seems to have spoken on AIM to so many people that I suspect he must have had half a dozen screens open more or less permanently!