fishbangwallop. what a brilliant tale. a fitting obituary.
running a rural business is really, really hard. its not 5 days a week you have to live and breathe it 24 7. the authorities are not interested and the public can be terryfying. but get it right and the rewards are enormous.
and mark saw an opportunity where no one else dared and not only laughed in the face of adversity but actually thrived in it.
i never met mark, but last month on a lovely lakeland winter day i collected a friend who knew mark and he immediately suggested we go see him. i had wanted to meet him for years and this was my chance. i picked my way through the mountains in an r44 and circled above at 5000ft. what a forboding fortress. right on a ridge line, with winds that must have funnelled up the hill side. this was marks kingdom, no place for a novice 44 pilot. i declined and we dropped the lever back to the seaside.
imagine the scene last night, wind, snow and darkness. the reason why i sit bereft for a man i never met is because daily i struggle with the complexities of running a rural business but beacons like mark weir prove anything is possible. his ability to glide through problems and turn any conceivable issue into a positive is THE key to surviving in this environment. at the entrance to his slate mine, engraved is the following.
" to hope is to risk despair, to try is to risk failure. but risks must be taken, because the greatest risk in life is to risk nothing. the person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, and becomes nothing"
rip. i can't begin to consider your legacy such will be its size.