My friend Ken Bodden, who has died aged 63 from a heart attack, was an unforgettable person who seemed to have lived several lives. A committed socialist, political activist, paralympic skier and musician, Ken defied convention and categorisation.
Born in Panama, to a Honduran father, Dorrel, and Jamaican-Irish mother, Avenel, Ken lost his sight to retinoblastoma at a very early age. But it was easy to forget that Ken was blind. Travelling with him on the tube, it was always me who got a nudge from him to say it was our stop, not the other way round. His sister Donna says he would cycle on their street as a child, using his spatial memory to know when to stop. As an adult he would ride tandem, including home from the pub (apparently he fell off only once).
He was educated at a school for the blind in Kingston, Jamaica, then travelled to the UK with friends, the Watsons, a Methodist family who were missionaries in Panama. Ken went to school in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and lived in the holidays in Manchester with the Watsons.
Ken loved sport. He got into skiing through Metro, an organisation providing sports opportunities for visually impaired people. He competed for Britain as a cross-country skier in the 1980 and 1984 paralympics and played cricket to a high level. I watched him play once at Lord's (and heard him – the ball had a rattle). He also loved music. A fine singer, songwriter and guitarist, he knew a song for every occasion and could keep a party going into the small hours with his apparently inexhaustible repertoire. He also worked as a piano tuner at schools in and around London.
For much of his life, Ken was a political activist. He was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Group and was active in Irish solidarity, in community-based struggles against police brutality, such as the Broadwater Farm Youth Association, and in the non-stop picket outside the South African embassy in London. With other picketers, Ken developed the City Group Singers, who helped make the rallies such exhilarating, life-enhancing events.
And it was this quality that Ken brought to everything he did – a great love and energy for life. He was stubborn, argumentative, a lover of Guinness, fine wines and Manchester United, a mean card player, fantastic with children and a true and loyal friend.
He is survived by his former partner, Hannah, Donna and brother, Rolando, and by the Watsons, Gwenda, Phil, Andrew and Megan.