Friends for life
It's 13th March 2025. If awful illness had not intervened, today would have been Martin Maclean’s 80th birthday. He’s on the right, aged 15, in this photograph. And that’s me, a year older, on the left.
I met Martin at school in Banstead, Surrey, in 1959. We rapidly hit it off, and over the years we forged a friendship that was to last a lifetime.
But towards the end of the 1960s, Martin was diagnosed with a particularly vicious strain of multiple sclerosis, and it wasn’t long before he was unable to walk. In his mid-twenties he was condemned (the only word) to a wheelchair and his promising career as a quantity surveyor was over.
The years went by and this most pernicious of diseases relentlessly continued to play havoc with Martin’s nervous and immune systems until it eventually reaped its final horror. In June 2000, this good and decent man, by now the father of three, died at the age of 55 – far too young.
From the age of 15 right through to the end, Martin was my closest friend. I still miss him, of course I do, and on what would have been his 80th birthday, I commemorate and remember him with great affection. This is the first photograph of us together (but not the last); it was taken by his mum in 1960.
Friends for life
It's 13th March 2025. If awful illness had not intervened, today would have been Martin Maclean’s 80th birthday. He’s on the right, aged 15, in this photograph. And that’s me, a year older, on the left.
I met Martin at school in Banstead, Surrey, in 1959. We rapidly hit it off, and over the years we forged a friendship that was to last a lifetime.
But towards the end of the 1960s, Martin was diagnosed with a particularly vicious strain of multiple sclerosis, and it wasn’t long before he was unable to walk. In his mid-twenties he was condemned (the only word) to a wheelchair and his promising career as a quantity surveyor was over.
The years went by and this most pernicious of diseases relentlessly continued to play havoc with Martin’s nervous and immune systems until it eventually reaped its final horror. In June 2000, this good and decent man, by now the father of three, died at the age of 55 – far too young.
From the age of 15 right through to the end, Martin was my closest friend. I still miss him, of course I do, and on what would have been his 80th birthday, I commemorate and remember him with great affection. This is the first photograph of us together (but not the last); it was taken by his mum in 1960.