David, our Alpha leader for the last two seasons, died on the 13th of March 2011. All Alpha members feel a strong sense of loss on this sad occasion.
David joined the group when we first started in 2004. He was then living in France and needed the contact with like-minded people whose passion was writing. He often joked about the many finished and unfinished novels he had stowed away in cardboard boxes under the bed. He participated with great enthusiasm in the annual Nanowrimo marathon which meant he had to more or less chain himself to the PC to bash out 50,000 words in one month. He did extensive research in preparation for some of these write-ins and gradually wrote his way into the novels that were his labour of love, about the floods that would eventually wipe out the eastern parts of England. He wrote because he loved writing. He had the imagination and the stamina to do it. He set the perfect example for the rest of us to live up to.
David’s illness started in May 2009. For a while the medical treatment kept him in good shape and he took full advantage of this to cheer our group on to write ‘great works of literature’. His Alpha-day missives were a treat that we all looked forward to. His own contributions to our regular challenges were always quirky and humorous expressions of his – often very – individual take on the themes. He loved experimenting and he never missed a single challenge. His enthusiasm spurred us all on, and Alpha will continue in a richer vein as he wished.
The following tributes from fellow Alphas go some way towards showing what a wonderful person he was and how much we appreciated him:
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“I shall miss him a great deal, right down to his proud Geordie dialect which I never quite seemed to penetrate…”
“I felt that we had everything on the same wavelength, and he was as keen on Alpha as I was, and was pleased to be leading it. Like you all, I felt that David was a good friend…”
“Though I had never met David I still felt I knew him.”
“I considered David a friend even though I'd never met him - he was unfailingly good-humoured and fun, and a delight to know (albeit virtually). I shall very much miss our email exchanges: actually it's hard to believe they won't be continuing.”
“…kind, patient, supportive, intelligent, great sense of humour. A man to trust with confidences, as I'm sure many of us know, and always reliable. A wonderful person to know and I'll miss our email exchanges and banter enormously, the attention to others, the quirky humour and apposite comments.”
“During the 18 months I was absent from Alpha David and I corresponded regularly. I always looked forward to his cheerful, witty emails while I was unwell and - although we never met - I came to look on him as a true friend. He will be sadly missed.”
“David WAS a friend, even though I never met him. When you're virtually housebound, your friends are mostly online and in that sense David was as real a friend as any I have away from my computer, perhaps more so. We do live through our words, after all.”
“Top bloke. I'm finding it very hard to believe that there will be no more mailings, no more emails from 'gertsbarn'.”
“His humour was always there, whatever the context, and I too, considered him a friend, and enjoyed the banter that went on in our emails.”
“He has helped me several times over the last few months... He was such a nice person to deal with, and I know how he loved the group, and wanted to keep it going.”
“What a lovely person he was and how bravely he put up with his illness. I feel as though I have lost someone close to me. He was a real support to me last year when I was ill.”
“I think of him as a true friend, always ready with good-humoured comments. Our common passion for writing and reading led to a warm friendship that’s so much fuller than the purely on-line nature of it would suggest.”
"I have never had a sadder task than having to delete David's email address".
