My Weird and Wonderful Lib Dem Family

It's been a long weekend away in London.

The primary reason for my visit was to attend Andrew Reeves' Memorial Service in the Union Chapel, Islington, yesterday afternoon. I blogged about my long trip to pay my respects at his Edinburgh funeral last month and I wanted to do the same with his friends in London at his memorial service.

As I rarely visit London more than once a year and hadn't done so since last summer, I took this sad reason for a visit to clear my diary and to make a long weekend stay of it to catch up with old friends. What it has reminded me is that I am a very fortunate person in that as well as having my own family here in west Wales and my family of University friends, I also have a full-on pseudo-family of Liberal Democrats who span the length and breadth of Britain and it is a family that continues to grow.

The Aberystwyth Link
I arrived in London on the National Express from Swansea at 5pm on Saturday and met up as planned with old Aberystwyth University Liberal Democrat friends Alistair Mills, Jo Gudgeon and Beth Fullana at their home in Clapham where I stayed the night. They shared a house in Aberystwyth back in 2005 and 6 years later, are recently back doing the same again! I'd stayed with Alistair and Jo at their previous Clapham address back in 2009 but I hadn't seen Beth since she graduated so it was great to see them all together again and it felt as if nothing had changed from those golden Mark Williams campaigning days of 2004/2005 which resulted, with help from this great gang, in Mark's election to Parliament that May.

It got even better because I then met with more old faces from the same era as their close friends Simon Columb and his partner Sarah Meadows happened to be celebrating their mutual birthdays on that same night as I was in town. I was invited along and it was great to see them again (Simon has a really good film blog at http://screeninsight.blogspot.com/ for those who are interested) and also another member of the gang, Kaff Cornwall. After a meal by Clapham Common, we went on to the local club 'Infernos' where by sheer randon chance, we bumped into another Aber Lib Dem alumni Malcolm James who I last saw in Brussels when he was working with NATO back in 2007 - he's now working with the MoD. The chances of randomly seeing him on the dance floor of a club in Clapham must be up there with winning the Euromillions. Absolutely staggering but brilliant all the same!

Lib Dems Nation-wide
The Aberystwhyth link continued because on Sunday and Monday evening, I stayed with great mate and fellow Welsh Liberal Democrat Sarah Green and her fiance Luke Croydon in Shepherd's Bush as I have also done before. We used to share a house togeher with other friends in what was my 5th and final year as a student in Aberystwyth (again, that fateful year of 2004/2005) in the Trefechan area of town.

Before I checked in with her and Luke for the evening and a pub quiz with their friends (in which we came a frustratingly decent but could've been better 3rd place), I'd spent much of the day with another good Liberal Democrat friend Hywel ap Dafydd who has been unwell recently and who I visited in University College Hospital near Euston. I've known Hywel as a fellow Pembrokeshire lad but who has spent much of his time around the country helping the party in numerous by-elections and also particularly in London and Bristol. My fondest memory of Hywel is when he accidentally locked himself in the HQ toilet on the day of the Blaenau Gwent by-election some years back. Much of our time on that day was taken up by trying to get Hywel out of that toilet!!

On Monday, I met up at Trafagar Square with good friend Anders Hanson who is now a top bod at ALDC but who has worked in his time for Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne and also as the Mid & West Wales regional organiser back in the 2003 Assembly election campaign, based in our Ceredigion office on North Parade. It was then, as a young and keen student member that I first met him and it was nice to catch up with him over lunch before Andrew's memorial service.

Andrew Reeves' Lib Dem Family
It was an excellent turnout at Andrew's memorial service for his partner Roger and I have re-produced photos of the order of service in this blog post to show off what was a brilliant pink theme for the occasion (to which I added my brand of colour with pink-ish shirt and pink-ish tie). I'm sure Andrew would've been bemused at the spectacle but would've chuckled away at the same time. Neil Fawcett blogged here of his recollections of Andrew which sum up the man as well as anyone did in the service itself.

Caron Lindsay has also blogged here about the service itself and I can't add any more to what she said other than that it showed just how strong we are as a party. It was Simon Hughes who said (I'm pretty sure) that it is at sad occasions such as this, that we show that we're not just a party, but a family.

His words particularly rang true to me as we all raised a drink in Andrew's memory afterwards in the chapel bar (yes, you read that correctly!). I bumped into Pete Dollimore there and we caught up briefly and I noted that I only ever saw him at the bar in conference and now here we were, at a bar, at a wake. It was all slightly surreal and so it continued. Seeing good colleagues who I have not seen in some time like former Aberystwyth student Adrian Smith, top trainer-extraoinnaire Candy Piercy, Sally Burnell who I hadn't seen since she worked in Cardiff back in 2003 (full marks to her for picking me out of a crowd because I'm hopeless at such things!), Grace Goodlad and Duncan Borrowman who I also haven't seen in a long time (but who I recall first meeting as a couple when Duncan led a Pageplus artwork designing course in Cardiff back in around 2006) as well as those who I have seen more recently in conferences such as Rhiannon Wadeson and Chris Leaman, Austin Rathe and Katy Riddle, Lucy Watt and Laura Gilmore as well as countless others from across the country emphasised the point more than words could express.

Because, we are a family. We don't always get on with each other, there's often disagreements and arguments but there's a common bond that ties us all together. We all happen to believe that a liberal progressive Britain is the kind that we'd like for future generations and we have all made the decision back in our mutual lives, that the best way to bring about this positive change is through the Liberal Democrats. Like a family, we see it through the good times and also (quite aptly at present) through the challenging times. Like a family, we are so spread out around the country that we often only see each other at weddings or funerals and in our case also of course, conferences. We're a rag-bag of oddities with our quirks, our annoyances, our hobbies and our passions.

Most of all, like a family, we're there for each other in times of need and it was in that kindred spirit of mutual support and care that we gathered at Andrew's funeral in Edinburgh and again yesterday, at his Memorial Servce in London.

I'm sure that Andrew was proud of his weird and wonderful Lib Dem family and this weekend has proved to me if it didn't need proving already, that I am likewise incredibly and fiercely proud to be a small part of this wonderful extended family.

A Service in Memory of Andrew Reeves

It's been an emotional rollercoaster couple of days.

When Jon Aylwin notified me on Tuesday that Andrew Reeves' funeral was to be on Friday, something in me said that I should go. As I stated in my blog after his shock, sudden death, it wasn't that I knew him that well but that I knew him well enough and respected him to feel it only right to make the journey to Edinburgh to show my support to the community of friends and family who have been left utterly devastated at his untimely early passing.

So within the space of 48 hours, Jon Aylwin and I planned our road trip north and accommodation in an Edinburgh halls of residence for the Thursday night. I made my way from Cardigan to Shrewsbury via Aberystwyth on Thursday morning where I met up with Jon who drove up from Cardiff.

Travelling north, it was already a mixture of emotions that I felt as I made my way towards a city that I love but that I hadn't visited for some 7 years. I've always been a big fan of Edinburgh having visited there several times but not since 2004 and I had mixed feelings on making the return under such sad circumstances.

Added to the poignancy of the trip north was the fact that Thursday, June 9th, was the 8th anniversary of my father's death in 2003.

Old Friends and New

We arrived in good time at 6.30pm to check into our rooms overlooking Arthurs Seat before making our way to the city centre to meet up with old friends and new at 7.30pm. We toasted Andrew's memory and shared stories of a life which had touched us all. It was particularly nice to meet up with old Aberystwyth University friend Heather Stitt who now lives in Leith who I hadn't seen in 6 years. We really can't leave it so long before we meet again. It was also nice to meet up with Scottish Lib Dems who I knew but who I had never met in person such as Caron Lindsay. In all, it was nice to be able to prepare ourselves for the day ahead with an evening amongst Lib Dem friends in the capital.

A Service in Memory
Yesterday morning saw an increased gathering as the majority of those attending Andrew's service were travelling up on the day.

It was great to meet up with old friends from the campaigns department who had like us, travelled the length and breadth of Britain to pay our respects to Andrew and we all made our way to the crematorium for the 2pm service.

Jokes were shared and there moments of laughter but then, suddenly, Andrew's hearse pulled up in front of the building and it suddenly hit me. Adorned with his adopted namesake's country's flag of St Andrew, seeing the coffin was heartbreaking.

But whilst there were tears of sorrow, there were tears of laughter to as the service remembered so well a life that was fully lived and a man who was well loved. It was a very apt service for Andrew in a packed room of some 150 friends and family. We entered with the Pet Shop Boys' Always on My Mind and we had music from Take That (The Flood) and Lady Gaga (The Edge of Glory and Born This Way). The Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Moore, gave a pitch perfect tribute which made us laugh and made us fondly recall all that Andrew had achieved both for himself and for others.

After the service, after some confusion about the venue for the wake, a good gang of us congregated at the All Bar One bar on George St where we had also met the previous evening. It was an opportunity to raise a final toast to a man who will be deeply missed by all who knew him.

After saying our goodbyes at 4pm, Jon and I set off on the long road-trip back south and I bought a copy of the Herald which had a lovely obituary to Andrew, written by Graeme Littlejohn. After 7 hours, Jon and I were back in Cardiff at 11.30pm last night having travelled a combined total of over 1,000 miles by car and train to be where we both knew we needed to be on Friday.

It was a desperately sad occasion but one which was made easier by the wonderful support that Andrew and in his absence his partner Roger, received from their extended Liberal Democrat family from across the country.

No doubt if Andrew was looking down at us all, he'd have Tweeted, 'what's all the fuss about'?

My Blogging Mentor - RIP Andrew Reeves

I was on the train on my way to Swansea on Friday morning when I heard the news via Facebook. At first, I thought that I'd got my wires crossed and that there must be two Andrew Reeves because the truth of the situation was so incredulous that it surely couldn't be true.

My Blogging Mentor -
Andrew Reeves

But unfortunately, it is and his position within the party was such that it merited this BBC News article on this sad news. To die aged just 43 of a heart attack and just months after his civil partnership with Roger is just heartbreaking.

Like Anders Hanson said of Andrew in his blog, it would usually only be at Liberal Democrat conferences that I would see him and though I didn't know him that well, he was nevertheless someone who I looked up to in the party.

The outpouring of grief on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook demonstrates just how popular and well liked Andrew was. Through his many years of work for the party in England to his life in his current role as Director of Campaigns for the Scottish Liberal Democrats, he engendered loyalty from those who knew him.

Andrew Reeves Running Blog
My particular connection with Andrew was via this very thing that I'm doing now - blogging.

For years I poured gentle ridicule on bloggers but I must admit that since I fully embraced the medium back in September. I have enjoyed it greatly.

Throughout that time, there are certain bloggers and blogs that I have followed more than others. One of those was Andrew Reeves' Running Blog. It always mixed well his interest in politics with all of his other life passions. What I particularly liked was how he had so fully embraced his adopted city's Ice Hockey team. I'm a Cardiff Devils fan on the quiet and despite the fact that the Edinburgh Capitals languished at the bottom of the Elite League, Andrew still supported them avidly and would report back their progress to us on his blog.

The fact that there was clearly more to him than just the politics endeared me to him. In my blogging, I have also tried to demonstrate my many and various passions in a readable and user-friendly way in the same manner as Andrew successively did.

As well as enjoying Andrew's blog and his style of writing, he was also of much support to me when I began blogging properly back in September. For a relative newbie to blogging, I had many technical questions that needed answering and I knew that I could always send Andrew a message on Facebook and he would helpfully reply and encourage my progress. He was all to happy to offer support and it was greatly appreciated. I also copied some of the trademarks that he had on his blog. For example, his was the only blog that I have seen which had a 'Map Counter' on the front page, showing readers how many people have visited the site from different countries from around the world. As a geographic geek on the side, I thought this was brilliant and on asking him where I had to go to download this application, he told me and the same counter now sits on my blog.

So Andrew was a great help to me and in many regards, he was my blogging mentor. I would visit his blog on most days and everything he said always came across in a balanced, reasoned, belieavable and passionate manner.

Everyone who knew him knows that we are all at a loss without him. His sudden death is a great shock to us all and I personally, still can't quite believe and comprehend it. Looking back on his blog, it was less than 48 hours before he was cruely taken away from us that he was blogging about the E-Coli outbreak in Europe and the need to ban the import of cucumbers from Spain as a result.

Now, he's gone and his blog will not be updated from that final entry. It is just mind-bogingly difficult to think that someone with such a zest for life, could be taken away from us so suddenly and without warning.

To show my appreciation to Andrew, I have changed the header to my blog in his memory. His encouragement played a large part in my decision to blog seriously and the example he set with his is one that I have endeavoured to follow and will continue to do so in the future. This gesture will remind me of his support for as long as I continue to blog.

Rest in peace Andrew and thank you for being such a kind and genuine human being.