Neil One Year On.

I'm still due my Scarface write-up/thoughts (remember, no in depth analysis!) and more Hawks stuff but real life gets in the way sometimes.

It's been a funny week. Within the space of one day, a friend lost his young brother in law, we marked a year since the passing of Neil and my friends Dan and Elaine Starborg became proud parents.

Last week, we remembered the first anniversary of the death of my friend, Neil Platt. His wife, Louise, had decided we should spread one third of his ashes, according to his will, up on Arthur's Seat which, for the uninitiated, is a large extinct volcano sitting smack bang in the middle of Edinburgh. And so we all trudged up the hill, in the piddling rain and freezing cold, each taking a sip of his favourite tipple, Guinness, and then each took a turn at sprinkling the ashes. There were some tears to begin with but, as he would have had it, these were vastly outweighed by alcohol and laughter. A short pub crawl in some of Neil's old student haunts in Edinburgh brought back good memories and we found some amusing alternative uses to the red boas the Jagermeister girls were handing out in Maggie Dickson's; red being the colour of blood, in the hands of fans of stupidly violent films. Give us a camera and we'll make the best fools of ourselves.

It's affirming to know there is such a strong groups of friends around. Even after all this time, we've not changed all that much. Some of us (including myself) are still as self-indulgently infantile as ever and I thank the Powers That Be for that.

Good times inspired by a good friend.

But the story doesn't end after a year. Louise has updated their blog, The Plattitude, with her thoughts and feelings about loosing Neil to Motor Neurone Disease one year on in a letter to Neil she has decided to share with everyone. It's touching, sobering stuff and brings home just how cruel, unremitting and painful in many ways MND is.

I still can't believe he's gone.

Anyone reading this blog, please try and continue to help raise awareness of MND.

The Motor Neurone Disease Association