Folkie

I am shocked and deeply sad.

I took this picture within a couple of hours of our first meeting, at WOMAD in July 2012. She's laughing at the picture she's just taken of me taking this one.

We met on only three other occasions, all in Liverpool, though I felt I knew her way better than you'd usually know someone after so few meetings. But that is the way with Blip, where we talk pretty openly about what matters to us. Folkie and I had plenty to talk about - we shared outrage at how people are marginalised then punished for being on the margins. We also shared a strong admiration for, and defence of, our NHS. I wish she'd been able to carry out her extraordinarily creative plan to take portraits of NHS staff while she was in hospital. She'd have done it brilliantly.

Folkie knew loads more about the music I like than I do - I always followed her music links and almost always enjoyed them.

When I shared my diagnosis here, quite a while before (I think) she got hers, she wrote, 'I hope you’ll stay as well as possible for as long as possible - I enjoy being alive at the same time as you.'

Oh, Folkie, I so enjoyed us being alive at the same time. How I wish we still were.