Stephen Loveless_Writer

"It's an unusual surname, Loveless," Stephen advised me as we shook hands, adding "and it's confined to a small area of the South West of England." A broad grin appeared like sunshine from behind a boiling cloud, his mop of unruly hair shaking with laughter.  "Doesn't explain how I was born in Leeds does it?"  Indeed it didn't and I couldn't explain why I was being interviewed for a part-time college course in August 2008.  I'd sort of pitched up and met this chap with an unhappy name. I'd written something before; surely this was enough?  Stephen sipped his black coffee from a polystyrene cup.
"Tell me what you've done so far ..."
"Weelll ...." I slopped tea over the leaflets covering his table and delivered my entire writer's CV in one garbled sentence starting with the immortal words "I've been writing since I could hold a pencil ..." and ending with "I want to get published!" I stared back at him waiting for enlightenment.  Except he waved his hand like Merlin the Wizard preparing to reveal a great secret.
"You've never finished anything, have you?"  Damn!  Stephen had seen straight through my bluff and, put on the spot, I signed up for two years of part-time study and a decade of friendship, mentoring and inspiration from my great friend, Stephen Loveless.

From the off, it was obvious that 26 fresh-out-the-box newbies knew bugger all writing.  Stephen soon filled in the gaps.
"Get it written ... then get it right!" he exclaimed waving his long expressive hands as if directing an orchestra.  Every writing tutor world-wide will tell you this and so it has become my mantra, especially when I'm about to weep tears of frustration.
"Embrace your dark side ... give it more gore." His voice was never deep enough for a full Darth Vader impersonation but it made me laugh.  His Bella Lugosi vampire impersonation was legend. "And keep going on the character, dialogue and plot ..." he insisted, "then you'll finish it."  Believe me, I never imagined I'd be writing about his ending.

Obituaries, I'm told, are what we know of the dearly departed.  I know his tall frame suited the jeans and colourful shirts he loved to wear with a battered leather jacket.  Stephen was easy to spot on his travels around the East Midlands, mainly because of the bulging shoulder bag he lugged everywhere with him; I always suspected it lived at the bottom of his bed like a beloved labrador.  It weighed as much as a black lab.  Stephen was great company wherever we met to chat and he loved combing the best charity shops for rare science fiction DVDs having vowed never to own a television set.  He favoured the Edwardian Tea Rooms in Birmingham's Museum for its comfy chairs and Dippy the Dinosaur resident in the basement.  Treating him to lunch was my pleasure; always chips and a bacon sandwich.
"Because I don't own a grill." he confessed, then laughed like a drain.  In truth, he didn't own much.

Fuelled by undrinkable, American-style coffee, I know he could write up a storm and did just that every time he picked up a pen.  Stephen John Sidney Loveless won the first ever Daphne du Maurier prize for dark writings in the Mystery & Suspense category, and penned the exquisite one-man play 'I am John Clare' which was turned down by the great poet's own society.  No sense of irony there then?  Stephen never said but I'm sure the rejection cut him very deeply as his friend and actor, Robin Hillman, recounted at the funeral service.
"I defy anyone to tell me where John Clare stops and Stephen's exquisite writing takes over." Such a heartbreaking moment reduced us all to tears once more because Stephen's love for writing never waned even after he'd been transferred to a Leicester hospital last September.  Despite the obvious distress of his situation, he'd written another play by channelling his remaining energy, passion and experience into his writing.
"My best writing ever!" he assured me and I believed him.  Whether it will see the lights of any theatre in the UK, only the Gods know.

No-one will know the reasons why Stephen Loveless didn't rise to the dizzy heights.  He was a very successful writer and brilliant theatre director except the material trappings just didn't arrive on cue.  Personally, I blame it on Northampton; he hated the place but it's best not to dwell as it's become his lasting legacy.  On a soggy Thursday afternoon, most of his friends yet precious few of his family gathered to drink tea in the Jesus Centre just over the way from St Giles' Church.  We started the day as strangers, united to remember a wonderful man who loved to help those less fortunate than himself and, bonding over tea and mini rolls, we told outstanding stories of a great writer who had departed far too soon.  We agreed that he had left each of us with a gem; something priceless, a train of thought, some kind words or a selfless deed to carry us forward through this life.  Loveless? He most certainly wasn't.

The Chinese believe that when we are born red streams of light connect us to the special people who are key to our lives and on 28th February 2019 one of my red streamers was slowly but gently disconnected to the music of George Harrison's 'Here Comes the Sun'.  Stephen Loveless followed the Ides of March and walked a path which chimed with the natural cycle of our Earth.  He celebrated Losar and was fiercely proud to have met the Dalai Lama; another man who loves to wear bright colours.  Stephen chose a green burial site possibly facing his ancestral South West and wholly appropriate with his love of John Clare who wrote,

'Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.'

Born:     23rd October 1950
Passed:  5th February 2019

Au Revoir Stephen John Sidney Loveless

Raven