The novelist in me would like to write that swimming liberated Francis, that for a few minutes each day he moved freely and confidently in the pool; but he was as unsteady in it as out. The lifeguard would hover nearby holding a life preserver as Francis lowered himself down the rungs of the ladder, swam a few strokes in the shallow end, and slowly hauled his ruined body out of the water.

I approached him one day in the small common room where the winter swimmers went to drink tea and warm up. We chatted for a bit and it quickly became clear that, although he had been swimming in the pool since before World War II, he had no recollection of my grandfather, Raymond, and had never heard of my great-uncle Leonard.

Disappointed, but not surprised, I asked Francis about his life and what trade or vocation he had followed. He said he still ran a small business, selling and maintaining office equipment, principally typewriters.

I was pleased to hear this. I told him that I was an enthusiastic user of manual typewriters. In fact, I owned three, one of which – an Olivetti Lettera – was no longer working. He suggested I come by his shop and let him take a look at it.

A few weeks before Christmas, I drove out to see him in a terrible rainstorm that presaged one of the wettest winters in British history. I had all three of my typewriters in the back of the car.

Francis’s shop stood in a little parade of others along the A217, between Cheam and Sutton, which it shared with a cafe, a drycleaner’s and a newsagent. The sign over the shopfront read dittami office equipment. Its phone number was still listed with an 01 prefix, but even without that anachronism it was evident that the sign had stood unchanged since the 1970s.

I found Francis inside, seated at a desk, under a brown Anglepoise lamp, using a jeweller’s loupe to inspect the wear on some type. The space was made oppressively small by the typewriters from every era which packed its shelves. I showed Francis my Olivetti and he wrote me out a receipt. He said his engineer was dealing with a backlog, but they’d do what they could. His engineer turned out to be a man called Simon who worked in the basement and must have been at least eighty. I told them there was no rush.

Driving back home in the rain, I felt distinctly gloomy about what I’d seen. It might have served as a vanitas motif – two elderly men padding about in a building filled with obsolete technology.