I first met Martin in 1976 when he was head of Biology at the Radcliffe School and I was starting my first job in the teaching world. Putting it simply, he was the reason I survived my first year. Martin probably knew the meaning of ‘panic’, but only from a dictionary. He emanated calmness and took everything in his stride – the perfect mentor for his ‘volatile Welshman’. An assertive, driving go-getter he certainly wasn’t, yet Martin quietly excelled at anything he became interested in, be it canoeing, rowing, music, beekeeping or making skeps, (who else would Disney go to for the latter?).
 
One of the very rare times I saw him off-balance was at the start of what everyone thought would be a normal school day. Martin walked quickly into the biology prep room with a worried air, which instantly raised our tension levels to Defcon 2. It turned out that there was a big exhibition at Green Park, and the head had, some time ago, asked him to prepare an exhibition for it. Martin had duly filed and forgotten the conversation until the head reminded him about it that morning, saying he hoped the display was ready as he would be standing alongside it. What’s more, he’d been informed that it was one of the exhibits that Princess Anne was due to stop and discuss with him. 
 
How long have we got, we asked? Until tonight, was the inevitable response. Hyperdrive engaged. An appropriate display was designed (by Martin) in about three minutes, planned lessons were binned and we all took our timetabled classes out to hunt down the required plant components. The urgency spread to the pupils, and, bless them, they responded. As a result, local inhabitants were treated to the sight of children swaying in trees, searching on hands and knees through meadows, and, in one case, wading into the canal – they were on a mission. Everything was brought back to Martin at mission control, and he started putting it together. I don’t know how late he worked that evening, but the result was four sequenced aquaria, each containing plants that would be found in the environment as the land in Milton Keynes went from natural state to one disturbed by development and then through recovery phases to a new ecosystem. Brilliant, and delivered to deadline. Martin hadn’t been worried in the least about the possible consequences of failure – he just didn’t want the head to look like a muppet at an event that was clearly very important to him. 
 
That was Martin. I’ll miss him.
 
Cysgu’n dda, hen ffrind.
 
Martin C.