We are sad to inform you, members of OPAF, that Colin passed away on 15th March 2021 just one day before his 96th birthday.
Colin was a valued member of the OPAF Steering group, his work as Webmaster and Chair of our AGM was appreciated by us all. He will be greatly missed.
I only knew Colin in his later years, as an OPAF member - and I would like to thank you - Amanda, Davina and Quentin for the biography, which as a result we now have a complete picture of a remarkable man.
Colin was born in a rented house in Montem Lane, Slough in 1925. His father was a telephone exchange manager and his mother was a stenographer. He was an only child with curly hair and blue eyes whose parents doted on him. Slough was surrounded by fields in those days before the trading estate was built, and Colin's father would walk to the local pub for a pint after work.
Colin lost his hearing in his right ear and damaged that in his left through mastitis, aged about five. His ill health was a major worry and expense for his family.. They moved to Saltburn-on-Sea when his father got a position there and Colin went to the local secondary school where he was bullied for his Southern and well-spoken accent. He was given a hearing aid, bought by his parents at great expense. It was a huge affair with a strap on battery pack so he only wore it once as it attracted much negative attention from other students.
Colin first learned to use tools from his father and engaged in all kinds of projects using Meccano and electrical and radio components.
His father died suddenly when Colin was 13 just before WW2 leaving the family in financial difficulty. Colin and his mother moved to Windsor. Colin's paternal grandfather funded a place at Haileybury School and Imperial Service College (a public school) where Colin excelled at a number of subjects.
He gained a place at University College London aged 17 during the war to study electrical engineering. His college was relocated to Wales because of the war and in addition to studying and lots of socialising he was in charge of a Home Guard platoon which he thoroughly enjoyed. One of his girlfriends from that era who was 21 when he was 17 looked him up when they were both in their 80s, still with a twinkle in her eye for him apparently.
I said to Dad "How on earth could she have imagined that you would be interested after all this time?" He said, "I am the same man now than I was when I was 17 you know."
After university and the war were both over Colin gained employment at Plessey's (I think) and worked towards his Chartered Engineer status.
He bought his first car in his 20s. There was no need to take a driving test and he has never done so. He developed a passion for both driving including rallying and racing and hill climbs with Windsor Car Club.
He also developed a life-long passion for Riley cars, owning them, fixing them and racing them.
He also was keenly involved in politics, joining the Young Conservatives in his 20s. At a party conference in the 1950s a cup of tea was misdelivered to his hotel room so he used the opportunity to knock on the door of the two young women sharing the room opposite. One of these was his future wife, pianist and fellow Young Conservative, Miranda Clark.
On one of their first dates, in a pub, possibly the Three Legged Cross, Miranda got so bored listening to him and his friends discussing the finer points of replacing a clutch or somesuch that she walked out of the pub and sat outside for half an hour. When she returned he hadn't noticed her absence.
She accompanied him to Silverstone but didn't develop any interest in car racing although she did pass her driving test as a young woman, encouraged by Colin.
Colin and Miranda married in 1956 and bought their first house in Wavel Road, Maidenhead where Amanda and Davina were born in 1958 and 1960. At that time Colin was working for Elliotts in Boreham Wood and he drove to work in his Ford Anglia.
In 1964 the family moved to Clarefield Drive where Quentin was born a few months later. The house was a three bedroomed detached house with a third of an acre of garden including a mature chestnut tree.
Colin and Miranda divided the tasks of managing family life, mainly in a traditional way where Colin looked after maintenance and the cars whilst Miranda's domain was the kitchen and domestic cleaning, gardening and so on. Colin did all his own car repairs and also those for all his children's first cars and motorbikes and was spent many happy hours in his garage or under a car with a spanner in his hand.
Colin and Miranda were both very involved in the Conservative Party local association and Colin was the Wessex Area Constituency Chairman, very active in the candidate selection of Christopher Ward who replaced Alan Glyn as MP for Maidenhead. I remember, as a child, being shown around the Houses of Parliament by Alan Glyn. I also remember the telegram that Colin received from Edward Heath in 1970 thanking him for his support in the election. I also remember Colin and Miranda attending a Royal Garden Party around that time.
Colin had been working on an overhead radar project at Elliott's when the funding was dropped by the government and he was then made redundant aged about 45.
This was a worrying time for Colin and I remember we had porridge for supper sometimes in order that the bills could be paid. Colin then secured a job in the Health Service technical division concerned with the use of and worldwide standards for radiography equipment. He did some very significant work in this area in partnership with engineers around the world.
Colin was a master of letter writing and many colleagues, family members and friends would turn to him for help in writing important letters about legal matters or difficult employment issues and so on. The way that he put across the facts and made subtle points and removed all extraneous content was widely admired in his workplace.
The downside of taking a job in the civil service was that Colin was now unable to continue in politics.
Colin used the extra available time to build a huge extension on the house including a triple garage to house all his thousands of tools. He would travel to Russell Square by train each day and return for 7 pm supper. Then he would put on his jeans and jumper (hand-knitted by Miranda) and start building. He did almost everything, the electrics the plumbing and the carpentry and designing and fitting a complex central heating system. He would get into the bath around 2 am, I had the bedroom next to the bathroom and would often hear him snoring in the bath. Then he would fall into bed for a few hours and get up again for the morning train to London.
In the early 1980s, Colin began to look into home computing. He built his first computer using a kit and then became a devotee of BBC computers and subsequently PCs. The family joke that Colin can speak hexadecimal. He not only learned to use a computer but to program and code and build them. He wrote his own word processing application for letter writing, called Coplan and this attracted a number of enthusiasts but did not take off commercially despite our attendance at trade fairs.
In preparation for his retirement from his job at age 60 in 1985, Colin and Miranda moved to Three Gables where Colin continued to work on the Radiography international standards and was elected as an honorary member of the British Institute of Radiology in 2003. He also continued to work on all kinds of things in his new garage. Miranda commented that she was only allowed to buy the house because it had a large double garage with a workshop.
When his first grandchild, three-year-old Sam, was asked to fetch Colin for lunch he trotted first to the study to see if he was at his computer, and then went outside where he peered underneath the car as these were the places Colin could usually be found.
Colin leaves three children, Amanda Quentin and I, five grandchildren (including my oldest who died aged 19) and three great-grandchildren. My daughter, Jessica, this week put on one of his jumpers to remind her what it was to have a bear hug from Dad. We will miss those so much.
There is so much more I could say.
Colin simply never stopped. He loved people and he loved projects. He always had time to help, to advise or support other people and gave his time generously and with good humour. I never heard him speak derogatively about another person he knew but might make a wry comment on occasion.
He was still completely engaged and interested in politics, current events, other people's problems and supporting them to find solutions right up to a week before he died. His body was failing in all kinds of ways but his mind was not. He was independent, sometimes stubbornly so, in almost every way until the last two months of his life when I came to assist him and take a little care of him.
Colin was born in a rented house in Montem Lane, Slough in 1925. His father was a telephone exchange manager and his mother was a stenographer. He was an only child with curly hair and blue eyes whose parents doted on him. Slough was surrounded by fields in those days before the trading estate was built, and Colin's father would walk to the local pub for a pint after work..jpg)