Dear Mark

I am a friend of Tim's from university - we did Biology together. I wrote last week to say how shocked and saddened I am by the news of Tim's death, and I have not stopped thinking about him since I heard the news.

I have just been looking at the web site that you have set up and it has brought so many more memories flooding back. I knew the story of him rescuing the sloth, but I didn't realize that he had written such a fantastic poem about it. Yet another talent that I never knew he had.

Looking at all the varied aspects of Tim's life that are represented on the site, I realised that there is one part of Tim's life, which has a very small cast list, that very few people know about. I'm sure that no-one else would be interested to hear about it, but I thought that you might.

Although I knew Tim right the way through university, my fondest memories of him are from the second year. For a start, that was the year that he engineered me getting together with my boyfriend Tom (who was at Reading school and Christ Church with Tim) - something that I am eternally grateful to Tim for, and for which I never thanked him. There were six of us living in a student house - four of my closest friends and my brother. We were, and still are, a very close-knit group, and Tim became a member of that group for much of that year. It is probably a quieter side of Tim than most people knew. There were no wild parties or stunts, but we had a big kitchen with a comfy sofa, and we all spent a lot of time together. Tim told us stories about South America, Tim and Shiv debated the UK's policy on refugees, Faye and Tim discussed their entomology collections, Tim and my brother told us that they should be exempt from doing the washing up because they didn't have the 'cleanliness' gene that we obviously had... We had some very happy times together there, and I think in the future when I think of Tim, that is where he will be - sitting in the garden in 8 Regent Street, telling us all about why tulips are so cool.

Something else that I wanted to pass on: the first conversation that I remember having with Tim, at the back of one of my first lectures, revealed that fact that we had the same favourite book: Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck. I don't know whether that changed over the years, but at the time Tim considered himself to be similar to the central charater in the book - 'Doc'. I believe that Tim had marked out sections that he liked in his copy, I don't know whether he would still have it or not.

Once again, I am so sorry for this tragic loss and my thoughts are with you and the rest of the family. If there is anything that I can do or tell you to be of any help at all, please let me know.

Yours

Hannah Leighton