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Alf's cart full of flowers |
Final farewell to much-loved rag-and-bone favourite Alf
Tributes to familiar face of the streets as old pals gather to remember their friend
THE lament of a lone bagpiper accompanied rag-and-bone man Alf Masterson to his final resting place on Tuesday.
As the sun blazed down, mourners packed the street outside his former home in Montpelier Grove, Kentish Town, to watch his coffin begin its slow journey to Golders Green Crematorium.
Many had laid wreaths and bouquets earlier in his wooden handcart, still parked outside his home of nearly 40 years, in poignant tribute to him.
The old-fashioned “totter” – one of London’s last rag-and-bone men and a much-loved face around the borough – lost his battle with cancer in the Marie Curie Hospice in Hampstead last Saturday.
Among the mourners at the service were Alf’s 90-year-old mother, Anne, his wife Phyllis, and their children Damian and Siobhan, as well as friends and family who had come from all over the country to pay their last respects. Many wept as tributes were paid to Alf and songs were played by two of his favourite artists, Elton John and Rod Stewart.
Daughter Siobhan said her father had kept his amazing strength of character to the end.
“He was proud, kind, caring and above all, a fellow human being,” she said.
“He had his faults but he was very strong and his sheer will was amazing. He had the time of day for every single person and that was a quality no one could ever take from him.”
At the traditional wake in The Gloucester Arms pub in Leighton Road that followed, friends and family swapped favourite memories of Alf.
Childhood friend, Peter Colson, 63, a cab driver who had travelled in from Twickenham every day to visit Alf, said: “We went to Ascot every year and he kept saying we would make it to Ascot again. I am devastated. If it had been a problem with a lung or a liver, I would gladly have given it to him.”
Another of Alf’s oldest friends, Gerald Pelzman, said: “You could never have another friend like him. The thing with Alfie was that if you were in his company, you were just engrossed. He just had a special way about him.”
Anne added: “He used to come and see me every Thursday with a bunch of flowers, mow the lawn and sweep the front for me. He was my eldest son. I miss him a lot.” |
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