Goodbye Trace

Subject	Goodbye Trace
PostedDate	12/11/2006
	I was at work today, maybe I shouldn't have been. I happened to look at my watch - by coincidence it was exactly 12.15. Some of you realise the significance of this particular time on this particular day. It's been a strange sort of a day, the last week has been a strange sort of week really since I got the phone call from Trudi on the Sunday. Perhaps at 12.15 today I should have been hundreds of miles away with some of you - I thought about it a lot over the last week. I thought about Trace a lot over the last week - even though I only met her very briefly on four occasions. I can't claim to have known her very well at all, and if I had been there today I think I would have felt a bit of a fraud - a bit of a hanger-on. I don't like funerals - I've been to enough. I don't intend going to my own one if I can help it. I've thought about Trace with every bottle of broon I have drunk this week - and there have been quite a few. I've been drinking that alcoholic beverage exclusively on my nights out since I heard the news. And now here I am communicating my thoughts about someone through the same medium that many people first heard of her. Is that right or wrong? I don't know - maybe I've said too much already and should shut up now. Maybe sometimes it's better just to say nothing - it's a tough one to call sometimes. Goodbye Trace. I can't possibly miss you as much as many of the people who read this - who knew you so much better than I did, and for much longer. But I'll still miss you - just knowing that you were out there somewhere rocking away or helping someone. But I guess in a way you still are, and always will be. The world was a better place for your being around, and you enriched a lot of people's lives. And if it wasn't for you letting me have your spare ticket I'd never have got to see the Wildhearts 'acoustic' show at the Barfly that time. You inspired a lot of people in many different ways, and I know you will continue to do so.