I am forever grateful that I got to spend so many magical moments and adventures (not to mention scrapes!) with Malcolm during the 1950s when our two families, the Aprahamians and Zemlas, shared a house at 62 Church Crescent, Muswell Hill.

Malcolm was a wonderful and endlessly inventive playmate. He invariably took on the role of leader while I was assigned the role of loyal assistant, stealing tools for him from my father’s tool cupboard, signing up to his secret society, succumbing to being tied up and then abandoned with worms dangling above my head ready to drop should I dare to move a muscle, and acting as lookout when he climbed a tree close to the railway line at the bottom of our garden, fell out and gashed his head, and was taken to hospital howling and bleeding profusely.

And it was on that railway line that Malcolm and Francis took the very last passenger train which ran on 3rdJuly 1954 while, like true railway children, we all waved from the garden.

Now it is time to wave goodbye to Malcolm for the last time after his amazing journey through life. Farewell to a unique and always special friend…