Once I’d heard he wasn’t well a few weeks back, I called him where we had one of hour long chats as he was waiting to be discharged from the hospital. He was in remarkably good spirits and was determined to go home and ‘beat this thing’. It was on my to to-do list to catch up with him in person but unfortunately, Old Father Time beat me to it.
I’m incredibly sad that I won’t be able to have one last trip with the old boy as he was great company - at least for me. I think if you look up ‘cantankerous’ in the dictionary, you would find Stewart smiling back at you. He was, as others have said, a difficult old bugger to get along with but once you got past that grumpy exterior, was a good soul. I was fortunate enough to share many good road trips with him, countless chats putting the world to rights and so many unpolitically correct rants that would make many a snowflake explode in anger. It still makes me chuckle how un-PC he was but think the world has lost one of its true characters.
I’ll miss not sharing a steak and an orange juice and lemonade on the Italian coast one last time. I’d like think he’s in a better place now and berating someone for ‘not doing it right’.
Ride on Stewart.
