Such a lovely man, always kind and easy to talk to. I have fond memories of working with William many years ago, typing up the latest chess moves that he’d thought up and my goodness, he loved a gossip ! I will miss bumping into William on my way into work and while he was dashing to Costa (free newspaper in hand) to have a coffee and watch the world go by. William, you will be missed.

Dear everyone who knew and shared time with William, William was born 25th June 1964 in Doncaster, and also lived in Alcester in the Midlands in the 1980s which is where his ashes will be laid.  He also lived in Woolwich in London for a couple of years while studying there.  He lived his last 37 years until passing away late September 2024 in his beloved Manchester after a year or so working and living in Reading in 1987/1988. William was a nice and gentle soul, and in many ways a true English Gentleman who very much cared about England and its traditional culture. He was very intelligent becoming a UK top-ranking expert chess player and World-travelling chess coach in his youth, and studied to be an actuary while in Reading.  He developed wide expertise in investing and the financial markets, and could even mathematically mostly win across some online betting sites. Towards the end of his life, he returned to being a chess coach with his passion for chess - having books on it on his desk and around his apartment when he passed away. William worked in the pensions industry in Manchester and was very knowledgable on UK pensions and associated computing. In his work, he was so nice, helpful, and very professional in the way that he communicated with people and he helped so many with their pensions. After 25 years of working for the same company in Manchester, he early-retired on 26th February 2021 at the age of nearly 57 after a total 33 years of working. He sadly suddenly and unexpectedly passed away at his desk in his bedroom late September 2024 aged 60 from a heart attack. He lead a fairly humble life with little to no extravagances and he once said his only splashing out was on his gas boiler insurance! He had a small Peugeot car before Reading but sold it not wanting or needing it in his central Manchester apartment - renting out his parking space.  He very rarely ate out or had any takeaways, except having a coffee at coffee shops in central Manchester (Cafe Metro and just a bit, Caffe Nero and Starbucks) and he even mostly gave that up after his favourite Cafe Metro closed. He cooked stews and meat in his slow cooker, yorkshire puddings, roasted vegetables, his home-made shepherds pie, and especially his life-long favourite of bought "toad in the holes".  He developed some passion for cooking including his slow-cooker stews, making carrot and coriander soup, etc. and would cook in batches freezing portions for later - he had a small extra freezer for this. He liked to heat chinese tea and keep it in a flask for drinking the rest of the day, and also had several Japanese style vases and bowls in his apartment. Although increasingly averse to change/modernisation, he bought an air fryer and embraced cooking with that. He loved eating the great steaks when visiting his friend Carl in the USA - and he loved the root beer there. He always really really loved dogs - plus feeding the ducks and geese on the canals around his apartment in central Manchester as well as previously on the canals by his previous small house in Salford. He was very proud of and loved his mother Sheila in very regular contact with her and visiting her as often as he could on the trains from Manchester to Oakham. Myself, Carl, perhaps his longest friend for the last 38 years, shared a small old Victorian terraced two bedroom house in Reading with William. We were brought together in 1987 by the couple owning the house wanting to rent it out to two people - the wife worked in the company that Carl worked for in Reading, and the husband worked with William in central Reading, and we both happened to be looking for somewhere to live at the same time.  I will always remember looking in at his bedroom floor there that was completely covered in papers and stuff, and him having his bedroom window wide open even when it was cold - he said he liked being under the bed covers keeping warm.  He got to be much neater after that - his Manchester apartment ended up looking immaculate from the photos his sister just shared with me. Every couple of weeks from the Reading house in 1987/1988, we would walk to the very nearby Indian takeaway called Alamin Tandoori which even now I still sometimes go to and remains delightfully unchanged as of 2024. In 1988, William and I travelled together as friends for the first time - a two day coach trip to Paris and Versailles organised via my work.  Around that time from Reading, he also accompanied me (sometimes with my girlfriend) to Windsor also its Safari Park (now Legoland), London (also, more recently, the London Eye and Harrods with my wife and I), Stonehenge, Manchester, and Edinburgh. I remember my work brief trip to Manchester once where I stayed at olde Piccadilly Hotel where he was interested to quickly see my hotel room and he proceeded to jump up and down on the bed like a child even though he was in his late 20s! We always kept in contact and when I went to work and live in New England in the USA for nearly twenty years, he visited quite a few times for weeks at a time. He loved visiting and staying with us there - once I drove him to Moose Valley at the top of Maine where he got his love for all things moose including moose (as well as dog) cuddly toys - and I would send him moose calendars and other moose stuff. I will always remember him first seeing several-feet piles of snow and experiencing the winter cold of New England which was a shock even to him who used to like the cold in Reading.  And remember him sometimes walking the half hour walk from my apartment to the nearby shopping area and mall, and back - it was notable because, especially back then, absolutely nobody walked by the sides of the roads there any time of year - and even he noticed everybody in cars staring at him like he was homeless or something! He loved visiting the Yankee Candle Village and many other New England nice places including Parkers Maple Barn which we all love. He loved visiting Mount Washington - the highest mountain in the north-east USA with, at the top, the strongest ever measured normal wind in the World - we drove up and down, or took the cog railway. We also took him to around New York City once - in that hotel room, he could not work out how to turn on the heating and did not ask anybody and next day said he had to wear his coat all night in bed! - sorry I did not realise I should have shown him the heating controls under a flap. He loved when one Christmas there we all went to cut down a Christmas tree from a Christmas tree farm in New England, and he really enjoyed a place there where you could visit with husky dogs.  He loved visiting and staying at the different apartments and houses where I lived in New England, USA - I think he saw most of them over the nearly couple of decades. In the New England Fall (Autumn), he loved going "leaf-peeping" with us to see the tree leaves changing colour. He especially liked going into Boston - in particular Harvard Square and playing against its "chess hustlers" as he named them probably before even that term was widely used for them.  They would always be out there by the street playing on the permanent chess tables by cafes and usually playing for money.  It was fun to watch them casually start to play William thinking he was just another average punter but, within minutes, they would be starting to sit up worried and be visibly increasingly sweating.  They soon learned to avoid and eventually refused to play with William! As well as us taking him all the way into Boston many times - on days that we both had to work, I would drop him off before my work and pick him up after work from the train station in Lowell where he would take the direct train into the centre of Boston and back. I have visited and stayed at his apartment in Manchester a couple of times and once stayed overnight at his previous house in Salford. Once from his Manchester apartment, he took my wife, her mother, and I to Manchester "Curry Mile" - my wife's mother loved the butter chicken there. Since I returned to Reading in the UK, he has stayed for many days at my probably final house now in Reading from where I took him for local mostly countryside long walks - he especially enjoyed along by the River Thames in Reading going towards Sonning, as well as Dinton Pastures.  From Reading a few years ago, William, my wife and I all did a day trip by car and ferry to the Isle of Wight via Southampton - in particular Osborne House and the Needles on the Isle of Wight.  He could be particular about where he went - he once politely declined joining us on day trips to Liverpool and Blackpool from Manchester, and also to Newcastle.  I repeatedly invited him to visit and stay with us more for weeks in our spare bedroom in Reading over the last many years - but it is a long way from Manchester to Reading and an increasingly very expensive train fare and he was so very careful with spending money. William did struggle with being on his own so much when having to work from home during Covid, and particularly after his early-retirement especially during the weekdays when his friends were working.  It helped him to have a routine going every weekday morning at least 8am to 9am initially always to his favourite coffee shop, Cafe Metro - after that closed, he instead divided up and did his shopping daily across all the weekday mornings. He would enjoy his coffee and watching the world go by with people going to work, and would read a paper newspaper - until he also gave all that up due to Covid, and then post-Covid cost of living increases even though he had well provided for and budgeted in great detail for his humble lifestyle long into his old age, alas cut very short. Despite my suggesting it, he was not keen to travel on his own even as far as Manchester IKEA not even for the cheap good food I recommended there, or even to a slighty distant Iceland supermarket to get his new 60+ Tuesdays 10% discount that I also recommended! He would occasionally walk along the canal as far as a park and then Asda, as well as some other nearby nice urban park areas. Though he did greatly enjoy at least the following that I know of: - Walking with his friend who had a boxer dog; - Just the month before he passed away, visiting Fletcher Moss Botanical Gardens in Didsbury, Manchester taken by a friend with a car; - His 50th birthday meal out with his old poker friends (he always really enjoyed playing poker with his friends mainly for the socialising); - Going to Buxton with his old poker friends; - Going to Batley for an Ale Trail by train with his friends; - Going to Hayfield albeit a bit too much walking up and down hills for him!; - Back garden and outside open space at his mum's house in Oakham that he did not have at his flat - together with enjoying the genteel and general niceness of Oakham compared to central Manchester; - Helping a friend with painting and I think painting his own window sills once; - From his apartment window, watching the birds on the small tree eating nuts put out by a neighbour. He enjoyed visiting and seeing all the many cats I have had over my life even though he was very much a dog person - he even once accompanied me to a cat shelter in New England, USA.  He was always interested to hear about all my life's events and even in my little DIY projects at home. I believe his main hobbies were investing/financial, chess, TV (films and documentaries), Internet browsing, cooking, reading, and shopping. I will always remember him once in his youth just suddenly saying to me about himself I think jokingly: "I am so nice that I wish I was somebody else so that I could be my friend." - it took me by surprise and I did not know how to respond but I have always tried to remember it in case it ever comes in useful! William got to see almost all my life from my rise from being raised in poverty in difficult circumstances through to my fall after Covid in my late-50s, and he was there for me in general and when my mother suddenly died over two years ago.  I sometimes look back over his words and advice, and have even occasionally asked on financial-related things "What would William do?" which I have never said for anybody else. William got to see most all the main aspects of my life that hardly anybody else has - including once visiting my mother and her flat where I grew up, and meeting the closest I ever had to a father as well as the closest I now have to a sister. I am an only child but will always consider that William was the closest that I ever had to a brother, and he was my longest and best friend - we also shared some quirkiness/eccentricity.  For William, he could never really let go of him being impacted by some societal attitudes back during his youth. It never crossed my mind that he would pass away before me since he was so disciplined and healthy - I have long had him included in my Will.     I already and will always greatly miss him, and hope to meet and pal around with him again in my afterlife.

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