Some lovely comments here from you guys, it shows just how well thought of he was, I knew Tony for well over 10 years and met up with him several times, he used to joke that his life was a bit like the old film 'kind hearts and coronets', there was a lot of stuff about him that could only be told after his passing. I guess I can tell you all a little more now about the man whom I considered to be a great friend, someone I for one will sorely miss.
Tony had an older brother whom he followed into the electrical industry,oddly enough for such a clever bloke, he knew next to nothing about house wiring and the wiring regs although he could quote chapter and verse on the mines and quarries regs, or M&Q as they are known.
His early part of his working life was spent in a quarry where they dug out limestone for the cement manufacturing industry, he also worked in a cement works and also at Tunstead Iron works. He was actually more comfortable working on the bigger stuff, heavy power as he called it, rather than the small stuff in houses, in fact he did ask me to go and fit some double pole RCBO's in his flat because he was unsure how to do them and couldn't sign them off, sadly due to illness and Covid, this was something that I never got around to doing.
He was in a lot of ways a deeply private bloke, he didn't suffer fools gladly and as many of you will know he had a lot of arguments on the forums, but once the argument was over it was all forgotten, he didn't hold grudges.
He travelled extensively in Europe with his wife when he was younger and was very proud of his son Carl, although like a lot of us he never really told him that fact.Outside of work he had many and varied interests, believe it or not he was instrumental in bringing the rave scene to Manchester in the 90's and knew quite a lot about it, his other big interest was classical music. Working in heavy industry whatever Tony did it was done on a big scale, when he rewired his house in Buxton where he lived with his wife, it was all done with stuff 'borrowed ' from work, and had a lot of unusual features. He also worked at ICI and McCain, god he hated their chips, lol. we both worked for the same company for a spell although in different departments and at different plants, he was on the maintenance and I was head of security, but that was good enough for Tony, as far as he was concerned, we were workmates, he was like that.
I remember we met on one of the forums and began to ring each other, then after about 2 years talking he invited me down to his flat in Nottingham, that'swhen things got really interesting!You see Tony had another side, one that not everyone knew about, Tony was gay, well actually he was Bisexual, and on certain occasions it bothered him, it didn't go with his image.
I remember our first meeting very well, naturally Tony had not told me of his 'other side' and had invited me over to Nottingham, we met outside his local pub, THE FORRESTERS, now there were two pubs of this name in Nottingham, one was the 'arms' and the other the 'inn', one was the haunt of gays and the other a lesbian pub. Tony had invited me over and then on seeing me he panicked a little, how would I react to finding out about his sexuality, it was something that although he was comfortable with it in his self, he often worried about how others would see him, I think it was because, and it seems odd to say it, but he didn't 'look queer' as he put it. He was a big powerful bloke when I first met him, standing six feet tall and well built, "I'm not your typical limp wristed fairy" he joked with me.
He needn't of worried, I liked the man, we had some good laughs, the beer flowed and a good time was had by all, in fact the landlord, John, was quite worried about his Guiness being up to my standards, Tony had formed an opinion of me on the telephone that I was likely to become violent at the drop of a hat, something that my appearance that first meeting did little to dispel. One time I got roaring drunk and wandered off around Nottingham, Tony was mortified as certain parts of the place were quite rough and he was concerned I would end up getting stabbed or something.
Outside of the electrical world for which most of us knew him he had several other interests, classical music, steam trains and Photography, in fact he used to do a lot of wedding photographs when he was younger in the Buxton area and even developed his own films in a darkroom in his loft. he also did stuff for work and several other places. As I said earlier he was also involved in the early days of the Manchester rave scene and would travel between there and Buxton in his Ford Sierra, always in the early hours and often at high speed. One night he was heading home and a car had followed him for several miles, Tony had put his foot down but the car kept up, eventually he'd had enough and stood on the breaks, the car behind narrowly avoided hitting him, Tony jumped out to confront the idiot, only to find out it was two of Derbyshire Constabulary's finest in an unmarked car, he gave them a bollocking for being up his arse, and drove off!
Once upon a time he'd organised a rave night for members of the gay community in a large club and a gang of Hooligans turned up intent on a bit of 'queer bashing', also the same evening a number of National Front supporters had visited the area, they were intent on a bit of 'paki bashing', back in the day someone was always bashing someone. Anyway the 'queers' were taunted into coming out of the club and a fairly large fight broke out, at this point the mob realised it wasn't going to be a walk over and they were taking quite a beating, then to make matters worse, their little debacle collided with the NF mob who'd been driven in from the other end, clearly the 'paki bashing' wasn't going well either! Tony somehow managed to get all the gays and the pakistani's back into the club leaving the police to deal with the troublemakers, much to the relief of the local police chief.
He was also well known on the fetish scene in his younger days and being good at design he designed his own costumes, this led to a nice little earner, as he put it having costumes made for other people, one of his proudest moments was when he was asked to be in the film 'Spice world' something he turned down as he didn't want to embarrass his son Carl with, although later he said that when Carl found out about it he said he'd have been proud, not embarrassed.
In later years he began to suffer from what I suppose you'd call mental health problems, he didn't like going out on his own, a far contrast from in his younger days and he began to drink quite a bit.He'd heard about the 'Elex' shows and wanted to visit one, but not on his own, I said I would go with him and to my surprise he booked us in at a top Harrogate hotel and treated me to a nice meal. He forced himself to get the train up there which was a challenge for him but he did it, and we spent the first evening drinking and dining before visiting the show the next day, I traveled home leaving him for a second night in the hotel during which time he ended up having a go at Tony Cable!" He was spouting Bowlocks", said Tony later, he then added, "don't ever leave me in the same hotel with him again".
I remember him asking me to help him with a very big job once, it was all HVstuff, moving a substation and some 132Kv kit on a large site in Doncaster, he'd been off the tools for a good while then and was looking forward to it. I drove to Nottingham and we then went to Doncaster, there we were all sat around this big table in a posh office, Tony, me, a guy from the railway, one of the senior engineers from Yorkshire Electricity, and the client, a young lad acting on behalf of his uncle, a wealthy Jewish businessman. The first problem was access to the substation, the young lad had lost the keys, Tony was getting annoyed and I went out and typical for me I took the lock of with a cordless grinder, that I just happened to have in my car, well doesn't everyone! We were all taking notes and this young lad was frantically scribbling on a pad, Tony thought he was really keen until he glanced across at his work, the rest of us had sheets of paper filled with figures on voltage, current loadings, power factors and the like, this guy had doodled a house, it was like something out of playschool! ,Tony lost interest after that, it was clear we were dealing with an idiot.
Also in the car was my German Shepherd, she growled and snarled at everyone, Tony included, undettered he insisted I stop off at the motorway services, he was going to buy some bacon sandwiches, he returned with three massive bacon barms, one for me, one for him and one for the dog. He then went to the rear of the car and opened it, the dog in the cage went mental, Tony sat there and chatted to the dog all the while feeding her bacon barmcake, then when she'd eaten it he went to stroke her, she went to bite him, they were both as determined as each other, he was going to be friends, she wasn't, right up until a couple of months before his death he was still saying he wanted to meet her again, he was convinced he would eventually get to stroke her. I remember the first time he went out in my car, a large white Volvo, it had loads of kit on for work and looked like a police car without the police badges, Tony hated it, not the car, just the look of it, he also didn't like the speeds I drove at, odd considering he did the same thing when he was younger.
He often came across as quite blunt, some would say rude, but a lot of it was a front with Tony, I remember late one night a couple of years ago, it was fairly late on and my phone rang, it was he. He'd had some test results back earlier that day and they were not good, basically his liver was shot, he'd done what he did in these situations and opened a bottle and in a way I can honestly say I would probably have done the same thing. He broke down on the phone and was sobbing, he was very frightened about dying really and wanted to talk but even then he was appologising, it was late and I had my own problems, he kept reminding me, to be honest I didn't care, he was a mate and he was in trouble, I owed it to him to listen and try and calm him down, he'd been there for me when I was at a low ebb, we were mates. I remember joking with him about how he had a private pension due and if he died it would all go to the taxman, that sorted him out, he hated the taxman and the thought of him getting the cash seemed to drive him on, he went on a bit of a spending spree and I talked him into buying a set of chefs knives that he'd fancied for ages, Tony was also interested in cooking and good at it too.
I remember the last time I spoke to him, he told me he'd been in hospital again and had fluid drained off his stomach, they'd sent him home and he was to go back again a couple of weeks later, he'd had the same procedure done a few times at this point and I joked about them fitting a drain valve. He'd really had the hump in hospital, someone had been smoking on the ward and a nurse had accused Tony, it wasn't him and he was p155ed off over it, "If it had been me I would have held my hand up" he told me. I used to ring him in hospital, he had a pay as you go mobile and ran out of credit so I topped it up for him, then to save him using the credit, when he rang me I wouldn't answer, then I'd ring him back, he thought I was being funny at first. lol I remember the last time we spoke, it was mid morning and he'd been up all night, I can't remember who rang who but we chatted for a while and he asked how I was, he always asked if I was ok, even though it was clear he wasn;t in good health himself, he sounded really tired and it was only a short conversation, about 15 minutes, back in the day we'd chat for hours.Finally he said he was going to try and get some sleep, he was in a lot of pain and wanted to rest, that was the last I heard from him that was on the 12th of October.
He was one hell of a bloke, very knowledgeable, honest and spoke his mind, I decided to write this to give those of you who maybe didn't know him as well as I did a little more insight into the man who was known on a lot of forums simply as Tony S, well to me he was like a brother, at times he could be a right cantankerous old sod, he was as grumpy as me, well almost, if he answered the phone with "allo you" then you knew he was in a good mood, if it was "what do you want" then he wasn't, we'd put the world to rights on many an occasion two people each with a beer, both on the end of a phone line moaning about how times had changed and how there were too many rules and regs and not enough 'proper' electricians any more. I could go on and on with funny stories about Tony, but I won't.
Rest in peace Tony my old pal, I for one will miss you.
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No idea then from memory and now I'll never know. I sense he had a good sense of humour or maybe it was the meds! 
