I know this photo isn’t the best ever (sorry to Claz who took it but I’m afraid it’s true) but it shows a scene that’s been close to my heart this week. I’ve been on a gruelling journey upcountry to the funeral of Robin Wallace-Sims, my best buddy Claz’s Dad. Robin is the chap in the red tee-shirt and straw hat behind a much younger me. Yes, I know I’m grinning like a fool and that’s because this day was one of the best days I’ve ever had.

The boat is the Elidir, built by Robin out of scrap. I consider it a huge honour to have been able to ride on it along the Thames. Much of Elidir’s woodwork was built from recycled wardrobes. By recycled I don’t mean that a carpentry company had taken them, disassembled them and rebuilt them as a boat hull for him, oh no – that sort of malarkey wasn’t for Robin. Oh no. He took apart the wardrobes and built the boat himself. As for the rest of the boat? Well, I don’t know - although I am hopeful that there is a record of how this beauty was made somewhere. Apparently the boat has an unusual way of cooling the boiler when it gets too hot and this is something that few, if any, other people understand now that Robin is gone. I heard today that the entire boat cost less than £400 to build because so much of it was effectively scrap. You might think this would make for a half-arsed boat but no – take a look at it here and you’ll see that there was nothing half-arsed about this beautiful thing.

Robin died last week, when he was at home with Mary, his lovely wife.

Judging by the vast number of people at his funeral today he touched many, many lives. I met him in either 1980 or 1981, can’t remember which – soon after meeting Claz. The Wallace-Sims family took a bit of getting used to because the entire time they were all together there was shouting, arguing and general mayhem going on, led by Robin in every way. He was a genius and didn’t suffer fools gladly so if you said something stupid in his company you WOULD be hauled up for it. Please respect that I use the word genius here in the real sense of the word – it’s all too often bandied about inappropriately these days but in his case it was true.

One of the speakers at his funeral recounted that Robin thought that a day spent not making something was a day wasted. I reckon that’s a great philosophy of life.

No-one at the funeral mentioned that Robin had cheated death some 28 years earlier when he was riddled with cancer, in hospital and his family had been told he was not expected to last the night. I must say that I visited him on a couple of occasions with Claire during those dark days and I am not sure that I have ever seen anyone so desperately ill. It’s not an image that’s easy to dispel. Claire thought that the reason no one mentioned it wasn’t because of a “don’t mention the war” attitude but was because Robin never dwelled on it and just got on with every day as though nothing had happened. While I’m certain that’s true, I also know that he did celebrate the tenth and twenty-fifth anniversary of beating the disease so he must have recognised how lucky he was.

Robin was unique. He did everything his own way. His engineering skills were remarkable and he had absolutely no fear so would try things out to see if they worked where a lesser man might have worried about getting frazzled or blown up. Over the years he’s come a cropper because of this and has fallen off walls, caused fires, blown stuff up and generally caused chaos.

Throughout our long association, we would usually meet up in the company of Claire but a couple of years ago, Robin and Mary visited us here in Cornwall and we took them wandering around the mines and ancient monuments of our area. Robin was fascinated because he was an industrial history enthusiast and a steam enthusiast so “our” mine buildings ticked lots of boxes…….mind you, even on that day he got into “trouble” climbing over fences to get a closer look at stuff. I was half expecting him to end up 200 feet down a mine shaft but fortunately there were no mishaps on that day.

Sadly that was the last time I saw Robin.

His funeral was a joyous celebration of his life. All of the speakers told tales of his “naughtiness” and wilfulness and, aside from the fact that we’ve lost a genius, these memories are his lasting legacy to us.

Mary, Claire and Andy lost their husband/dad and I am SO sorry for their loss.The rest of us who knew him lost a charismatic, vibrant man whose knowledge and skills were rare in this world.