Yesterday – September 13th 2022 – I opened an email from my friend Ian Rysdale that read: Kevin, its with immense sadness that Im writing to let you know that Steve passed away this morning. This came as an almighty shock. I had no idea that Steve Clayton was ill, let alone fatally ill. Ian went on to explain that Steve had been very sick for the last six months with leukemia, kidney failure and a suppressed immune system. He had kept his condition a secret as, according to Ian, he just didnt want to make a big issue of it.Typical of the man.
I first met Steve in August 1998 when I started teaching in Maturin, Venezuela. Teachers at the International School of Monagas were obliged to share apartments, and Steve, stranger, was my flatmate. We immediately hit it off. I suspect that the Headmaster, Ian Rysdale, a close friend of Steves from England, put us together knowing we would get on. We were both British, were roughly the same age and loved watching sport. Unlike me, Steve had spent his whole teaching career in England, in his native Lincolnshire, and was married with children. Leaving his
The first big decision that had to be taken regarding our shared apartment was which of us would occupy the big bedroom. I was about to suggest we toss a coin, but Steve magnanimously volunteered for the smaller room. Perhaps he deferred to my being slightly older, or perhaps he sensed he might not be in Venezuela for the whole year he had signed on for. As things turned out, Steve quit after five months and returned to his family in the UK.
During the months we lived together, we never once argued and had a lot of laughs. In the morning we travelled to work in Rysdales car with the music of ‘Walk Dont Run by the Pink Fairies blasting out. Not my favourite track, but Steve and Ian loved it. On more than one occasion Ian delayed arriving at school until the track had finished. During school we saw little of each other – Steve being in Primary, me in Secondary – but during the evening we visited our favourite restaurants and bars, downing countless bottles of Venezuelan Polar beer. In the apartment we often drank Venezuelan rum – Cacique –
We talked all the time about our favourite topics: football, cricket, boxing, music, Monty Python, teaching and books. Steve was and unpretentious but an intellectual. I will never forget the time I asked him to read a letter – a I think, about something at school – and was Dont you think its a bit pompous? This took me aback but, on reflection, Steve was dead right, and I revised what Id written.
By an amazing coincidence, Steve had done his teachers training at my former school: Old Swinford Hospital (OSH) in Stourbridge, West Midlands. Hed been there just before me in 1975 as a P.E. teacher, and we swapped memories of the eccentric characters in the staff room of this venerable and ramshackle boys boarding school. In our later email correspondence, OSH was occasionally mentioned, the last time being on July 24th 2022, when Steve replied to my email about a former OSH student: i was there the previous first half term of summer 75, so trevor smith would have been there...perhaps he remembers the handsome,debonair young PE teacher who was briefly there ! or most likely
In the end, Steve decided to break contract and rejoin his family in England. The responsibility he felt for his wife and mentally retarded daughter outweighed the freedom and excitement of being in Venezuela. We kept in touch by email. I still have everything he ever sent me. What we used to talk about together in Maturin - football, boxing, music and so on – we now discussed via email.
He was a prolific correspondent, passing on newspaper articles (including hilarious unintentionally bad restaurant reviews from Scunthorpe), titbits from Wikipedia, boxing and cricket statistics, sketches, movie and book titles and music tracks. Glancing through my stored emails from him, we often wrote to each other several times a week.
