Day 2: 16 April 2026
It’s another cycling day today and it looks like its going to rain. But I had £100 in sponsorship yesterday, which is a brilliant start. I am really grateful to the three friends who started off my fund-raising.
This blog is not really aimed to give a full account of Alice’s story. That has been fully covered in lots of other places. In addition, I have retold it to so many different groups of people, that it has become the part of Alice’s life that is at the forefront of my mind, and I don’t really want that to be the case. There are so many other lovely memories that I want to hold onto.
Alice was born on Christmas Eve 1991 at 7.30 in the morning, so speedily, that the midwives refused to believe I was in labour until ten minutes before she arrived. She spent the rest of her short life continuing to surprise me. Being the third child out of four meant that she had to stand up to two older, more confident siblings, but was denied the place of baby of the family by her younger brother. So she had a point to prove, and did she prove it!
Alice was the queen of drama. She played the part perfectly, whether it was a bombastic king in the Brownie production or a smarmy sales rep on a joke phone call to her dad. She loved dressing up and showing off. Alice had a beautiful singing voice and brought the house down on many occasions. I will never forget her rendition of “The Snowman” that silenced a fidgety audience one Christmas. The first time I ever heard “Fairy Tales of New York”, by the Pogues, was at a school concert sung by Alice and a classmate (I was slightly shocked when she started on the scumbag and maggot bit, but they brought the house down together). I think my favourite singing memory was when she surprised us all at a charity concert by singing “I have a Dream” from Les Misérables.
When Alice was 10, she went on a PGL holiday with the school and was introduced to the sport of fencing. Alice had a natural talent for the sport and immediately fell in love with it. She was popular on the fencing circuit and although I sometimes thought that she excelled most at the social side, she was Leicestershire woman’s epee champion and also East Midlands champion for a number of years, going on to captain the Northumbria University team.
Alice was so full of fun. She always had a witty comment or a funny meme to share and was a genius at playing harmless, hilarious practical jokes. She loved to make people laugh and her generous, empathetic personality meant that people were always at ease with her. Losing her has meant losing a lot of laughter and left me with a sad and empty part of my heart.
