Hi all, as a final note from myself, in conversation with Paul Loader I give the words spoken at Dave’s service today. Paul is one of Dave’s oldest friends who also lived close by and the pair met on a regular basis. Doreen, Dave’s widow asked Paul if he would deliver his own thoughts at the funeral service. Paul sent these to me and said he did not mind if I shared them with forum members.
Well, what a tough day for us all here and watching on the screen. Each of us will feel Dave’s loss in a personal way whether it is as family, consultant, sounding board, problem solver or simply friend.
I am grateful to Doreen asking me to say a few words and I would like to think I do so as if it were any one of you standing here. How do you do justice to a special person like Dave? I don’t think we can.
We think of Dave for his intelligence, his incredible ability to analyse a problem or situation and cut through it forensically. That was one of his gifts, his ability to filter out 90% of what distracts most of us and go straight to the heart of something. We saw that in coffee all the time, we saw it engineering, in how industry and politics worked, in marketing and sales, in economics and personal finance. We saw it in his understanding of planes, trains and vehicles. We saw it in his knowledge of history, and academia, we saw it in all manner of things.
Daves first gift I always thought was his honesty. His integrity. He said to me probably 20 years ago “the only thing I can’t stand in people is lying. Tell me you don’t care, tell me ‘well I want it and I’m having it’, or tell me ‘I don’t want to do it, it’s not important enough to me’. But don’t lie and don’t waste my time. I can’t help you when I don’t know the truth.”
And for whatever reason that I never quite understood, he had an inner drive to help. To help the ordinary person, to help the underdog, to help the consumer, to help the coffee beginner, the enthusiast, the person needing advice on just about anything.
Although this is a sad day, part of me thinks Dave’s perspective on it would be that he made tough choices in his life to set himself up and be able to spend his time doing the things that mattered the most to him. And we know that he did that. He retired at 45, I’m going to repeat that, he retired at 45.
He told me he knew he wanted to retire early on his very first day in the office at BT aged 23. By his early 40s he had 2000 people reporting to him and was being sponsored to join the main board of directors at BT. But that wasn’t his plan and he was able to engineer his retirement. Astonishing really and the details would be a much longer story. So, think of his life in another way, he enabled 20 years of doing what he loved and not having to get out of bed early to go to work.
As is typical for many people of his age born in the 1960s his life was shaped by World War II. By which I mean the post-war culture and hardships of Britain following the war years and this was an interest and passion that stayed with him. He loved the ‘old movies’ and he told me countless stories about the propaganda that was usually deliberate misinformation to give us an advantage. It would take too long to share them here but I can tell you that it included telling his father (Dave’s father was in the RAF in bombers) and Dave would often enlighten him of what really went on.
Dave was blessed with a unique reading ability, as a young child he found he could read down page after page at speed and would understand and retain what he read. So he absorbed huge amounts of knowledge which many of us recognise.
This past year I hardly saw Dave as I had taken on a big dog and he had taken on a new cat. So when my dog discovered electric fences in the countryside this year I was curious and asked Dave how they work? He told me of course.
How on earth do you know this I asked? Well Dave said, when I was 6 my parents took me to an animal farm and I leaned on one and got a shock. But it wasn’t the shock that got my attention it was the pulsing of the fence and that got me curious. So I went home and looked it up in my big book of knowledge. That was Dave, most of us would be playing with toys but Dave was curious and learning.
We think of Dave as a real coffee expert and a dedicated enthusiast which is why I always laughed as he described himself as lazy. Come on Dave I said, surely you like the hands on process. Do you mean if you could stand in front of a black box with a touch screen that would weigh beans, grind, distribute and tamp them, extract a shot and add water milk and sugar to your taste without you doing any part of it you would? Yes he said, absolutely.
Which is why I also laughed whenever he was coming over to mine as I learned the hard way to treat it like the royal family visiting. You know, the cleaning and preparation, drop the shower screen and clean it, leave no chance whatsoever of criticising your coffee making process.
If I had the time I would tell you many more stories and I know each of you has them too. Dave had real integrity, he was a champion for the ordinary person and of the person needing help. He loved his music, he flew gliders when younger, he travelled extensively much of it with Doreen and with James and Sophie. He loved travelling to Italy to see Paolo in Naples and also their trips to Milan. He loved with working with Martin and others. He loved his family, loved his succession of cats needing a good home, loved his friends and also loved mischief and humour.
We know we lost one of the best when we lost Dave. He touched a lot of lives and he touched ours. If he were here, I think he would ask us all to carry the torch, to look out for each other, to make the effort to learn and to share and to enjoy the time we spend with those who matter to us.
Rest in peace Dave.