Inspirational Alice Pyne

We have had a lovely weekend - James said tonight that we could hardly have packed more into it and yet it has not felt frantic or hurried in any way. Today we went out for a very nice lunch with Heather and Ewan - it was a really good January deal at the Italian Café in Merchant City - and this evening we went to see the film "Les Miserables" at the Quay with Grandma. I have been looking forward to this film version of the musical since I saw the trailers in the Autumn, and I loved it. More about it tomorrow.
However I would like to pay tribute this evening to a very brave young girl, whose blog I have been reading since she started posting in the summer of 2011. Alice Pyne was diagnosed with non Hodgkins lymphoma at the age of thirteen and has known for a long time that her illness was terminal. Today I was saddened to learn that she died yesterday. Alice called her blog "Alice's Bucket List" and she listed all the things that she would like to achieve before she died. Some of these were the kind of things that many teenage girls would like to achieve such as meeting Take That and swimming with dolphins, but her main ambition was that everyone in the UK would sign up as a bone marrow donor. And an estimated 40,000 people signed up as a direct result of her efforts. She and her sister and parents also raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charity and set up "Alice's Escapes" a charity to arrange holidays for families with seriously ill children. Her blog was always upbeat and she really lived her life to the full. She chatted about all the things she and her family got up to. Against all the odds, she recently reached her 17th birthday (just a couple of months younger than our Davie) but by the end of 2012 I could tell from her blog that her health was deteriorating fast. She still blogged cheerfully and managed to enjoy her last Christmas with her family. I think that Alice was an amazing girl. In her own words:
"I've created a bucket list because there are so many things I still want to do in my life ... some are possible, some will remain a dream. My blog is to document this precious time with my family and friends, doing the things I want to do. You only have one life ... live it!"