My tribute:
Simon was a big part of many lives at one period or another, particularly for myself in the late 1980s-early 1990s, when we worked together and shared some interesting adventures. It was with Simon that I first learned to look at geology not only upon, but beneath the Earth's surface.
His contributions to the rich archive of mining history were notable. Particularly important were The Talybont Mines (Industrial Archaeology, 1981); The Cwmystwyth Mines (British Mining, No. 17, 1981); The Goginan mines (British Mining, No. 35, 1988) and The Darren Mines (British Mining, No. 40, 1990). In the vicinity of his HQ at Talybont, we crawled around all of the holes in the ground that were accessible at the time, blew up a few things to clear blocked places and even successfully winched a full-grown heifer from a deep open stope - the most awkward rescue operation I've ever attempted. But to Simon at the time, nothing was impossible.
In our time together, we mined gold at Calliachar Burn in Scotland, dewatered the notorious No. 9 Adit at Cwmrheidol, shotfired multiple seismic lines at several places including that for the A3 tunnel beneath the Devil's Punchbowl at Hindhead ("I say, there's no shooting allowed here", a rather conservative-sounding woman's voice drifted up from the gardens below. "it's OK it's gelignite", came the riposte). I also got a thorough grounding in dealing with Type 1 diabetes when it becomes unstable and there were a few "situations" we had deep underground that demanded swift tactical thinking in order to get a good outcome. Without the diabetes, there are no imaginable limits as to what else Simon might have done. With it, day-to-day life became more and more of a challenge.
As often happens in life, our paths diverged in the mid 1990s, but those are days I will never forget, doing interesting, challenging and more often than not, downright filthy tasks in places that were either dark, wet or both. I wouldn't have had it any other way. RIP mate.