Entrance and opening music: Hello Old Friend by Eric Clapton.
Celebrant: Alison Grubb

Stephen John Wood (Steve)
Thank you for coming here today to support Julia, Anna, Mikey and Jamie at this time. They would like to thank you all for coming, for your messages and your support. You have come here today to give thanks for knowing Steve and to express gratitude for the days and years shared with him. We are here to remember this unique person and recall the life that he lived. By remembering the best of Steve, you will cement the memory of him within you and that will never leave you. It is not possible to portray the life of someone in just a few minutes, so Julia Anna Michael and Jamie hope you will join them after the service for a drink at The Sea Horse in Shalford where you can continue to share your memories of Steve and come and meet baby jack.
As you probably know, Steve did not practise any particular faith and so, in accordance with his wishes, this ceremony will not have any specifically religious references. We shall hear an account of Steve’s life and quality, followed by the formal farewell and a brief close.
There will be a time for quiet reflection within the ceremony, which some of you may wish to use for prayer.

Steve became ill last year and after many doctors’ appointments was diagnosed with bowel cancer. Steve being Steve accepted the diagnosis bravely approaching it in his usual organised way. He didn’t need to know more than he needed to, he dealt with it as another project. Tackling it in his methodical way, but with huge bravery. The speed of his illness has taken his family by surprise. On Saturday 23rd January, Steve became quite poorly but he was still himself, making wry jokes and thanking the family for being there. He and Julia went to bed on Sunday evening, Julia woke at 1am and realised he had gone.
Stephen John Wood: born in Epsom hospital, 65 years ago, a son to parents Gordon and Greta, and a half-brother to Martin. The family soon moved to Ifield in Crawley where they lived in The Mill House, a house which Steve really loved. At eight years old he was sent to boarding school in Windlesham and then onto Lancing aged 13, where he indulged his passion for sport and met his lifelong friend Dudley. Steve excelled at running and javelin and completed his education with A levels. At just 18 years old, he left for South Africa where he spent a year in Cape Town working for Pitney Bowes office Supply Company, before returning to the UK.
On returning from South Africa, Steve moved onto his father’s boat and decided that it was now time to return to college. But whether it was the year out in another country or a year working or just that his contemporaries were much younger, Steve quickly decided that college was not for him. Steve’s Dad had always been in business and Steve thought that was really where he should work. So he began working at Dorland Advertising and then at Schweppes, where he seized the opportunity to learn all aspects of the business world.
It was during this time that Steve moved into a flat with his long term school friend, Dudley and also Ian, Dud’s friend from University. It was an amazing house in Hornton Street, Kensington owned by a Polish couple, the Lubomirskis or Lubos, who had many young ladies from all over Europe staying as paying guests. Dud, Ian and Steve had the flat on the top floor.
About the same time a young Portuguese lady called Julia came to England to improve her English. She was one of the paying guests in the house and remembers hearing Steve playing “American Pie” over and over again while she was translating in her room underneath as he managed his breakup from a girlfriend. Steve and Julia met on the stairs but it was Dudley who invited all the young people in the house to dinner and the rest as they say is history.
Their first date was in Regents Park where they sat on a bench outside the toilets. They recreated the date last year, forty years later.
There were ups and downs in Steve and Julia’s relationship and in 1976 they split up. Steve had then to leave Schweppes to go to Jersey because his father was very ill. He stayed for a year and worked at Coopers & Lybrand in order to learn the basics about accountancy whilst looking after his parents. He came to London at the beginning of 1977 for an accountancy course and stayed at Hornton Street with Dud. Julia happened to go for lunch at the Lubos and they met on the stairs again. This led to their marriage on 27th May 1978, in Portugal and they lived happily ever after.
They moved into a little rented house in Esher while Steve began to immerse himself in his Father’s new propeller business in Petworth, going to test it in Littlehampton. As winter approached, testing had to stop and Steve and Julia moved to Jersey for 6 months, which Julia remembers involving the only winter in many years, when there was snow.
1979 Steve and Julia returned to live in Byfleet and began to try to find somewhere to really settle down. Julia set about the task and found Millstream Cottage 36 years ago, where they have loved being ever since.
During this time Steve was able to use his considerable talents to assist his father’s friend, to develop a self-pitching propeller. Steve’s father financed the development and Steve worked alongside and sold the product. Needless to say it didn’t make them millionaires. The family remember with fondness that grandpa decided to get into CB radios as mobile phones took off…. You get the picture. The net result of these adventures was that Steve felt that he couldn’t get a “proper” job. Somehow working for his Dad, he felt, left him with no real work track record and so this is how Steve fell into the world of cars.
December 1980, in St Helier Jersey, saw the arrival of Anna, followed by Mikey in a less exotic Chertsey in 1983. Two children was a real squeeze for the family in the little cottage, but after some half-hearted house hunting in Godalming, both Steve and Julia decided that staying put in Millstream Cottage was the best thing.
In the mid 1980’s Steve bought the field behind the house and in 1988 the cottage undertook an extension. The field allowed Steve to find a new love – his red Massy Ferguson tractor, fondly nicknamed “The Duchess”, bought several years later. When I first asked the family to tell me about Steve, they mentioned cars. The renovation of the Alfa Romeo Montreal. Building a mini, the many cars for sale in the family garden. The office of Millstream Cars in the back garden. But the tractor became something else mechanical that Steve loved.
The field also meant a project to build the bridge from the family garden to the field. Steve could turn his hand to anything and was happy to help everyone. He was a source of great advice to all his friends and family and never grumbled about helping. In recent years he helped Anna and Jamie with a multitude of DIY jobs in their new home and worked really hard to help their new neighbour set up their daughter’s wedding in the field after their booked wedding venue was flooded. This led to the return favour when Kev helped Steve with the beautiful wedding in the field of Anna to Jamie the following month. This was just part of who Steve was.
He had an engineer’s mind, a cool, calm exterior but was a true softie inside. He had a funny dry sense of humour. Manly but sensitive, always willing to help anyone. Everything approached in an organised methodical way. Odd jobs, DIY, “The reluctant Superhero” his good friend calls him. His very good friend Douglas says:
“what I want to say is that it was often the little things that just got me and so endeared him – the dogged dependability, the trustworthiness, the easy charm, the thoroughness, the consistently high standards by which he did anything and everything from being a Dad to mending a chair leg and the ever-present sense of humour – all just fantastic. Everyone knew they could rely on Steve to be Steve. And that was always more than enough”
Steve loved cars. He became an advanced driving instructor. He is I’m told responsible for the young people of Ripley not only passing their driving tests, but being schooled in pass plus driving techniques. He also taught Korean engineers at the Daewoo factory in Worthing, the finer skills of English motoring.
Steve and his friend Jeremy became involved in classic car rallying. This led to many exciting and happy events in the UK; but his all-time favourite was the Monte Carlo rally. This subsequently led to years of marshalling rallies, mainly the Scottish Malts in the Highlands with his friend Mike Miller. Steve not only loved being around the cars and the people, but the landscape and the organisation of the whole event.
Steve was very interested in photography. He had a dark room in his family home at Ditchling and always thought he would like to set one up in Ripley…then digital cameras arrived…He used to enjoy taking photographs of scenery rather than happy family snaps...
There were of course family holidays. A couple taken in a car to Germany, Italy and Switzerland with Status Quo and the Travelling Wilburys blaring, and lots by air to visit the family in Portugal. Also an exotic one to The Dominican Republic and a couple of trips to Florida. The first one to DisneyWorld, for the children, but enjoyed even more by Julia and Steve. For Anna and Steve’s combined 90th birthday, the family spent 2 weeks in South Africa – returning to Steve’s beloved Cape Town where he was finally able to show them where he lived and worked and then onto the Garden Route where they enjoyed spending quality family time visiting animal reserves.
Steve was a great animal lover. His first dog was a cross Alsatian called Juno when he was a child, whom he adored. When Julia and Steve decided to have a dog after they married, Julia remembers with laughter catching Steve practising his dog training before the puppy even arrived. It paid off as although he was strict with Sammy the golden retriever, he was an immaculately behaved dog. Sammy had a marvellous life wandering wherever he liked and making his own friends. Julia said they had to put up notices after he died, which led to letters of condolence from people they didn’t even know.
Along the way came many more waifs and strays at Millstream Cottage. Various hamsters, goldfish, two cats and even a peahen called Daniella became great sources of amusement for Steve. He inevitably became involved in the upbringing of Anna’s hamster and was particularly amused by its unusual method of traversing the cage – hanging, Mission Impossible style from the ceiling bars and loved watching him roll around the lounge in its plastic ball. Their big black cat Mowgli loved Steve. She’s not a cat that wants to be petted but loved being with Steve and liked to jump on his tummy when he was having an afternoon siesta on the sofa.
Steve loved his garden. Dormant at this time of year, but with the bulbs poking their heads through waiting to burst with life. At this time Julia Anna Mikey and Jamie are struggling to celebrate Steve’s life. But as the garden comes into bloom from spring to summer they know that their sadness will begin to move a little and they will bring Steve back to be with them. At home in the garden.

Friend tributes:

Tribute by Dudley Hilton
Steve
Steve was one of those rare people who was both fun to be with and genuinely interested in people. He was a great one for a project – no matter how small something was he would work out the best way of doing it, and then get on and do it! He had this knack of turning an everyday chore into an experience. Once he had decided that he needed a particular part or tool, tracking it down became an intrinsic and pleasurable part of the whole job.
He was great at sharing as well. Although he was quite happy doing things by himself, I think he always enjoyed himself more when there was a friend to chew the fat with. In the mid 1970s he talked me into taking a half share in a 14’ clinker built launch he had found in the Exchange & Mart. This boat, which Steve insisted should be called the Discombobulator – a word incidentally that I think he was significantly responsible for introducing into wider usage in this country – was a part of our lives for several years.
Steve had a great sense of fun. There was one occasion when we were returning to Ditchling after a day’s boating, towing the Discombobulator behind Steve’s BMW 3.0 SI – one of Steve’s all-time favourite cars – when we got stuck behind a queue of cars headed by a Jaguar XJ6 crawling along at a ridiculously slow pace. When we got to the very steep but straight bit leading up to Ditchling Beacon, there was no traffic coming the other way so Steve simply dropped a cog or two, put his foot down and swept past the queue of traffic. As we shot past the Jag, the driver looked across with a very haughty expression which suddenly changed to one of consternation as he saw the Discombobulator hurtling past him. Steve really enjoyed that and to this day I can remember the look of quiet amusement on his face.
He was also a great one for helping people. My parents were delighted in their late 70s when Steve heard that they had a tree in the garden which was causing them some concern and the next thing he was there complete with chainsaw and the tree was no more. They were even more delighted when he stayed on for a cup of tea and spent a good hour sitting with them in the garden just chatting away.
I could go on. His deep and abiding love for Julia and the family. How he was the “go to” person whenever a question arose about a car. His immense pleasure in driving and all things car – and he was easily the best and safest driver I was ever with. The way he made friends with people because of who they were rather than what they were.
He was very special, and I will miss him more than I can say.

Tribute by Ian Steere
Steve
Most of us here have known Steve well as a friend and family-man. We have all experienced his care and his generosity of spirit – no need for me to elaborate on these. So I thought I might take you back to a time when he was a young man, footloose and fancy-free.
In our early twenties, as you have heard, he and I shared a flat in Kensington – together with Dudley. Dud and I have recollections of some of Steve’s more intimate and noisy adventures – from a time before he met Julia – but these are probably too colourful for us to relate here.
In the summer of 1972 I was on eight weeks study leave for my exams. Being a lazy sort I actually did little studying. Steve was then a salesman for Pitney Bowes. Quite often he would return to the flat soon after lunch, having finished his calls for the day. So we would find more interesting stuff to do.
On sunny afternoons we would sometimes walk over to the Serpentine, in Hyde Park, for a spot of boat-racing. Now this was done on the cheap - and somewhat unconventionally. We would hire just the one rowing boat and take an oar each, side by side. Then, on the count of three, we would thrash away, each rowing as hard as he could. No timing or coordination. The sole aim was to propel one’s side of the boat faster than the other’s. The winner was the one who could turn us, so that we ended up going in the opposite direction. I don’t know how many ducks and swans we put to flight, squawking for their lives!
I have to report that Steve normally won. I might make the better start but he had more endurance.
In those days Steve was just as thoughtful and considerate as you have known him to remain. Most weekends he would go back to his family home in Ifield. Occasionally, if he found out I had nothing arranged, he would invite me as well. We would mess around there, with his mum, dad, brother and aunt in the background. I remember mowing the family fields on a large sit-on mower – great fun for someone who had not used such technology before. In the meantime, Steve would be taking apart or putting together an old car. He was a car-man then and he remained one thereafter. I guess he also remained a field-man – but he upgraded from sit-on mower to the tractor which became a pride and joy at Ripley.
Some while after this, I planned a trip to the Scottish highlands with my then girlfriend. At that time I had no car and intended to hire. On hearing this, Steve insisted on lending me his old motor, which he had by then fixed up. This was a muscular and weighty Humber Hawk, which did about 10 miles to the gallon. It had a splendid, throaty roar. I found out why, when the silencer finally disintegrated somewhere near Inverness. In the end I reckon it cost me as much as a car-hire – but it came with so much more character and love!
I could go on. All my abiding memories, however, reflect Steve’s enthusiasm for life and his interest in, and care for, others. Even those on the fringes of his life, such as my stepson and stepdaughter, think of him with fondness. He made his world a better place and he leaves that imprint on all here who have known and loved him. I have had few true friends in my life. I now have one fewer. I miss him.

Tribute by Jeremy Ford
Tribute to Steve

It is with great sadness but tempered with gratitude that Julia has asked me if I would say a few words about our good friend Steve and the memories we shared.
Our families first met when Anna and our daughter Francesca were starting their young education at Ripley Court School some 30 years ago. We had recently moved nearby as our son Alex and my wife Chris had already been commuting up and down the A3 from Esher to the same school, and a close friendship developed.
Steve’s stalwart friendship, humor and kindness over the years leaves us all with great memories. From Steve and I competing in my old Volvo in the 1996 Monte Carlo Challenge – where Steve and I battled through France to the Mediterranean in the snowiest classic Rally ever held up until that time. The annual trek to
the Vintage Sports Car Club hill climb meeting at Prescott with Douglas, Mike Miller and others. The Goodwood Revival to watch classic car racing with the same usual petrol-head suspects over several years. To a couple of wonderful holidays in Portugal where Chris and I stayed with Steve and Julia at their flat in Estoril. A place where many of you will have been treated to their amazing hospitality, an informed tour of the area and the world where Julia grew up.
Steve was a man of many strengths apart from being a great friend. He was constantly busy always taking on one project after another, readily helping other people and was always there with his practicality, his extensive knowledge and skills to help out and assist others with their own projects.
Two occasions particularly spring to mind in my case: To get started in competing in classic rallying I borrowed a car from someone quite well known in the sport and it wasn’t until we got it home (nearly choking in the process) that I realized that this may indeed have been a mistake! Quite a major one - as this vehicle had a tendency to leak noxious fumes at a prodigious rate into the interior. On receipt of that information Steve kindly stepped forward saying he would see if he could do anything about it and I left the car with him, returning the following weekend to see if anything could be done about it. Indeed it could. He set to, and having spent most of the week under the car with a bright light and several cans of filler plugged all of the holes and therefore enabled me to proceed as planned. Such kindness!
Later when we had moved down to Hampshire Chris and I decided to build a steel framed gazebo in our new garden but it became obvious that our first attempt was seriously flawed as it rapidly took on the same attitude as the Titanic, post Iceberg, due to soft sandy soil. Steve offered to help and came over and suffice it to say after considerable effort and a redesign of the installation we managed to dismantle and rebuild it in a day. It still remains standing after all these years.
Latterly my own career involved a great deal of travel, usually to places far away and to countries where one’s application to travel usually came with some kind of foreign office safety warning. In one case a “Do not go notice!” Despite that, a phone call with Steve provided a reference point of constancy in an ever changing world, with a mental picture of Steve and Julia, Millstream Cottage, the flowing river, the song birds in the background and……the maintenance of the grounds. A conversation about the continuing issues concerning his third favourite woman “The Duchess” not working properly, and the many and various projects being undertaken - ranging from bridging the river, hedging, mowing the meadow to his perpetual battle with the maintenance of the lane, providing a reassuring reminder that normality was attainable.
All that in stark contrast to the armed man guarding the outside of my hotel room door, the 40 plus degree temperatures and/or tropical storms were unimportant and temporary inconveniences when all was said and done. A certain anchor in such times and characteristic of this calm, measured, drily humorous, and kind man.
When I think of Steve now I am always reminded of the passage from one of my favourite books “The Wind in the Willows” which to paraphrase would go as follows, “And you really live by the river? said the mole “What a Jolly Life!” “By it and with it and on it and in it,” said the Rat. “It’s brother and sister to me and company, and food and drink. It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not worth having and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing.
Thank you Steve for being an original, a ‘one off ’, for your friendship, your enthusiasm and for showing an alternative way of life to those of us more typically trapped in the rat race.

Formal Comittal
Before we bid Steve a final goodbye, there will be a few moments silence for each of you to recall your favourite memories, or to pray if you wish.(1min)
Be thankful for the life of Steve Wood. For the love he gave. For the friendships he sustained. For his contribution to your world. Nothing good about Steve’s life will be lost because it was of benefit to you. All that was important to him will be respected by those who follow, and all that was great about him will continue to mean so much to you.

Close
The needs of those who grieve can differ from moment to moment, day to day and week by week. Sometimes the need to be alone and quiet, conflicts with the need to talk at length. The need to weep can be at odds with 'pulling ourselves together' and trying to 'get on with life'. In the coming weeks and months, Steve’s family will try to make some sense of the future without Steve and in this they will need the support of you all.
Leave now with peace in your hearts and in charity with one another. You were privileged to know Steve, remember him with joy. All his hopes and dreams now rest with you. Recall all those aspects of his life that you honoured, respected and loved, and let them make your life a living memorial to Steve.

Closing music: The End of the Line by the Travelling Wilburys