Thank you everybody for  coming today to say farewell to Linda.   Linda and I have been together for over 30 years.  Before we met there were gaps in our lives and we filled those those gaps for each other.   Many people will miss Linda and life without her will be hard for me.

Linda’s  parents  came from families that fled from the oppression of Jews  in different parts of the world.   Her father’s family came to England from Poland and her mother’s family fled Iraq to India from where descendants emigrated to England and America. People sometimes asked,  seeing Linda was not of Anglo-Saxon stock, “Where do you come from?” Linda replied “Willesden”, where she was born in 1949.

She won a scholarship to the North London Collegiate School and read Chemistry at Oxford. She subsequently trained as a  social worker, and worked for several local authorities,  and then as a nurse and worked at Charing Cross Hospital and as a Nightingale Nurse,  and then as a psychotherapist where she had a modest practise in the little room in our flat.

From a young age Linda  suffered  health  problems and spent spells in hospitals. She suffered from COPD , a lung condition, and  from when I first knew Linda  she would pause when walking to regain breath every now and then.  However, she decided that she would live life at a pace that suited her. She travelled in  America, Europe and in India where she spent another spell in hospital during her  several month’s there.  She had devised a method of dealing with the condition and astonishingly walked up England’s highest mountain with me in 1990.   Later she taught other people how to deal with breathing  problems and published a pamphlet on the subject.

Linda  spent her life helping and supporting many people and friends.  Her mother once called her the ‘Madam of the Good Deeds’.

She was involved with many organisations and causes, among them the Gipsy Council, CND, Medical Aid for Palestine, the Jewish Socialist Society, the Labour Party, the Refugee Council, Action on Disability, the Medical Foundation and Labour Heritage.  Linda loved music, was a fine pianist and was practising the violin in her final years. We attended numerous musical concerts together.

Linda  was a remarkable  person and a wonderful person for me and she will live on in our memories for  a long time.