The phone rang in the Spring of ’68 and a strange voice welcomed me to the Dartford Boys’ Crusader Class. I was a bit surprised as I hadn’t yet decided to accept the leader’s invitation to join. It was the voice of Ian Smith and he and I soon became friends – initially within Crusaders but in a wider sense later when he became a close friend of our family.

With his fluent French Ian chaperoned June and I on several trips to the continent notably when we took our tandem to the Loire Valley with him as our ‘support car’ and also for his 70th birthday celebration with his French friends at Fourges in Normandy.

In retirement we met Ian for coffee every Tuesday morning at various locations in and around Dartford and we miss his gentle humour as well as his forthright manner of speaking – I often told him that I learned so much about myself during those coffee sessions!

We shall always remember him too for his patience at the end in coping with the frustration caused by the dreadful Parkinsons’ disease.