Gosh Alan I will really miss you. You have been a huge influence on my life - politics, music, all those LPs and CDs over the years, beautiful books when I was a child - the Just So stories, then Karl Marx, of course. Books on music, your wonderful letters most of which I still have tucked in the books. You sitting in your chair talking about something looking up at your library of books as a memory jogger for a reference or quote. Music scores to me especially Bach's St John's Passion which we discussed in depth and at length. Lots of tea round number 27, hilarious stories telling the everyday of people with a humorous edge as you were a skilled raconteur. Your door was always open to me at no 27 for which I will be eternally grateful.

So here is a photo taken by Helen in her back garden of you and me in our red scarves. Mine was knitted by Nanna Rogers in about 1966, you expressed an interest in having the same which she duly knitted for you which over the years got washed and worn out. This one that you are sporting in this 'photo, more recent than the original, is wider and redder, was splendidly hand knitted by your Ann, your soulmate. 

Lots of Love from your niece Joanne xx