PERCY Duff is packing up his calculator this July after 60 years of juggling figures for Kendal.

No doubt this modest man would like to go quietly, without fuss.

But Kendal Town Council has bestowed a great honour on its treasurer, that of Honorary Citizen of Kendal, writes Rachel Garnett.

The septuagenarian motorcycle enthusiast is proud to receive the title, only the second man to do so. Coincidentally, his former schoolmate Judge Sir Sanderson Temple QC was the first. Mention the name Percy Duff to most Kendalians and they instantly think of old photographs of Kendal. But he is quick to point out that it was wife Margaret who compiled the vast pictorial record of the auld grey town.

Together they have published four books on Kendal.

The two celebrate 52 years of marriage this week, and Kendal has always been their home.

"I've always thought of it as a desirable place to live, and I've never wanted to live anywhere else," explained Mr Duff. Given the chance to emigrate to sunny New Zealand after demobilisation, he turned it down. "You rack your brains and you think, should I? I didn't."His roots are firmly embedded in the town. Grandfather was postmaster and grandmother ran Skipworth's sweet shop, on Stricklandgate, famed for Everton toffee. Born at Ferney Green in 1922, his father was a post office worker.

Since childhood, he has attended Stricklandgate Methodist Church.

Schooldays took him to St Thomas's CE School, then Kendal Grammar School, where maths proved his forte.

"I started as a junior clerk in the treasurer's department in 1938, straight from school," he recalled.

"At that time the town council administered everything - gas, electricity, water, education, maternity and child welfare. As the office boy, I had to do all the running about, taking stuff down to the post, running messages, seeing to housing applications and making gas refunds. "It surprised me, the number of people who couldn't read or write. They used to come in for their gas refunds and they couldn't sign the book, and they used to have to put a cross."War came and, in 1941, he joined the Army, serving in the Battle of El Alamein.

"That was the turning point of the war. I was in the anti-tank artillery, one of Monty's men." He was wounded in Tunisia in 1943, and later took part in two landings in Italy - Salerno and Anzio.

Back home in 1946, he ordered his first motorbike. "It took a year. It was great when it came, it was a BSA."The career ladder climb began, and accountancy exams had to be passed.

Borough treasurer Alfred Wainwright, famed the world over for his Lakeland walking guides, was his teacher. "We used to call him AW. He was a very competent man to follow and an excellent chap to be articled to. It had to be right - there were no half-measures with him."When Wainwright retired in 1967, Mr Duff became borough treasurer, then town treasurer.

But there has always been more to him than figures. Passionate about vintage motorbikes, he and his wife kick started the Barbon Hill Climb in 1960. He is Westmorland Motor Club president, and honorary vice-president of the Auto Cycle Union's northern centre.

"I've been interested in motorcycling since 1936. I went to my first scramble on my bike at Skelwith Bridge when we were at the grammar school."Before the war, he played piano with the Modernaires at YWCA dances, keeping young couples moving with waltzes, foxtrots and quicksteps.

Steam trains are another favourite, if risky, pastime.

"I managed to get into Romania in 1971 when the Iron Curtain was still there. I got arrested for spying on the Russian frontier when I was taking pictures of trains." A trip to Poland saw the steam fan locked up again, a year later.

With his close ties to Kendal, it is no surprise that Mr Duff works for many charities - honorary treasurer and administrator of the Mayor of Kendal's Homes for the Aged and Infirm, trustee and honorary treasurer of the Westmorland Arts Trust, trustee of Animal Rescue Cumbria, and chairman of the Lake District Art Gallery and Museum Trust advisory committee. He will continue those close links after retirement.

July promises to be a momentous month for Percy Duff, when his home town bestows upon him its greatest honour.

Teacher and pupil, Wainwright and Duff, are sure to go down in history as two of Kendal's greatest citizens

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