Dear Ann, Alan & I first met when serving in the RAF at Abingdon, now an army base in Oxfordshire. Abingdon was in Berkshire then, home of the famous MG sports car. We were both serving in the main stores when we found out how near we lived to each other in civilian life and this formed a bond between us. These were what most people would call our formative years. At eighteen years of age we had high spirits and thoughts of today, rather than what we would do in the years to come. We spent a never to be forgotten camping holiday in Devon, with an old army bell tent and a borrowed Ford 8, which would only go up Porlock Hill in reverse! Alan & I formed an even closer friendship in the scouting movement in Brockham, where Alan was the Scout Leader, I was the Rover Leader and Rev (Skip) was the village church minister and Group Scout Master. 22nd Dorking Group had a remarkable gathering of talent in the years before the early 1960s, when Imperial HQ decided that Rover Scouts were to be no more. Up to that time we put on a show every year to raise funds for the group, Wey House children's home in the village, as well as support for the Southern Railway Orphanage in Woking. Alan's support for these beneficiaries was quite fierce and we all joined in with gusto, having a great deal of fun at the same time. We have met people since who have said how much the people of the village looked forward to our gang shows; some of the boys who were young scouts in those days have greeted us with most enthusiastic hand shakes (left hand, of course) and wonderful reminiscences of those days. When passing through Brockham on occasions I have visions of those lost years of long ago and still see the smiling faces of Alan's Mum and Dad when I called in to see them, it was almost a second home to me. I have so many memories that it is difficult to put them in writing in order to express them with the warmth and emotion that they deserve. We drifted apart as Alan moved to Somerset and the scouting movement didn't want us in the manner in which we could best serve. Marriage (Alan was my best man, when I married Betty) and our families became our priority, as well as our occupations demanded more of our energies. Alan & I still kept in touch and Rosemary and I spent a wonderful holiday on his boat, on the Sharpness Gloucester Canal but we have not been able to meet up since he and Jennie moved to Spain. Alan will always be remembered with great affection by us. God bless!