A dad has shared the heartwarming story of his elderly neighbour Ken who died recently but not before buying Christmas presents for his little girl, one a year until her 16th birthday.

Owen Williams, from Wales, shared photos of the bundle of presents on Twitter. Ken Watson’s daughter brought round a sack of them, telling Williams they were for his daughter, now two, for the next 14 Christmases. 

“He always told us he’d live til he was 100 years old, so these gifts would have taken him up to our little girl’s 16th Christmas,” Williams wrote. 

Williams and his wife thought it would make a nice Christmas tradition to give their daughter “a present from Ken” for the next 14 years. “Issue is, we really have to open them now,” he added. “Nobody wants to give a 15-year-old Duplo!”

Using a poll, he asked his Twitter followers whether he should open them now and rewrap them or just do a lucky dip each year – to which the 6,000 voters overwhelmingly voted for a lucky dip (74%). 

After his tweet gained traction – it’s had more than 500 retweets and 3,000 likes – many asked Williams to share more about Watson.

Watson was a former salvage diver, seaman, carpenter, and baker, said Williams. “The first time I met him, he was bouncing a 20ft ladder across the face of his house,” he wrote. “He was on top and he was 83 at the time.”

He added that the family dog loved Ken (“I mean, genuine visceral love”) and it was mainly due to the chocolate digestive biscuits he gave her on first meeting. “She’d scream whenever she saw him,” he wrote. “Really scream. He’d call her “my darling” and “sweetheart”.”

Watson loved playing the accordion – Williams and his wife would hear the “strains of oompah” drift through the kitchen walls late at night. And he always said he’d live to 100. 

Many people on Twitter were taken by the heartwarming story – including us.