"...I find the sad thing at this moment we as a community where not there for her if she needed us because unfortunately she did not ask or tell us, I remember her going into hospital earlier in the year and being worried about her cats but I feel we all forgot her,"


No, Selby, we did NOT forget her, and that thread is testament to that.

I was the one that started that thread, albeit in disguise, so as not to get the usual flack.

What few people know is the Diane and I wrote to each other 'behind the scenes'...and when one of her beloved cats went missing after she had moved house, long before she became ill, I wrote to her, suggesting that he might be back at her old house....as this had happened to a neighbour of mine, and their cat had walked from Pinner back to Walton-on-the-Naze.

She was very touched that I had written to her and told me that many, many others had also written to her and how deeply it had touched her heart. She'd put on Ian's board, over on fRoots, that the pain she felt from the loss of her cat was only akin to the sense of loss she had over losing her great friend, Sandy Denny.

We both knew that we brought people into the BBC board and, as such, into folk music...and Diane and I sparked off each other as no other two posters did...and often she'd have me rolling round the floor with her wit...although she most certainly went OTT at times, but those times were possibly some of the best, where I screeched and she sighed and we'd fight our verbal battles to the death.

When the BBC banned us both, they ended that board, utterly and totally. It had become the most popular, thriving and vibrant board they had and it ONLY worked because of Diane and I.

We were made for each other....and I most certainly had respect for her, even though she drove me nuts at times.

Her fieriness encouraged to me to learn so much more and her imagination brought out mine.

Strangely, with the news of her death, albeit seemingly to have occurred months ago, I feel I've lost the best writing partner I ever had....Diane was able to say things to me that NO other person was allowed to get away with.

I'd probably not even have become the passionate writer I have, were it not for her, for she ignited something in me.

I have missed her for many years, ever since we were broken apart by the BBC. I will always miss the silly ol' bat, for there will never be another Sweetums, for sure.

And I know that if she were reading this, she'd be putting fingers to keyboard to tear all the wimpish emotion apart, but inside her, inside that deeply private part of her, lay a very different side of her...

She even got a Get Well Soon card from her Sidmouth Seagull when she was taken ill, as I knew the hospital she was in and spoke to the nurses there as I wanted her to know that her cats WERE being taken care of. The nurse told me how very pleased she was to hear that, as Diane had been so desperately worried about them, and that she'd tell her immediately. "Could you also tell her that Lizzie sends her love, please"...and that was passed on to her...and she knew that I cared when she received my card, for it was one my daughter had painted, of a Sidmouth Sunset...and it was filled with words of concern and humour too.

So she DID know, very much, that people cared.   She lived the way she did because that was the way she wanted to live....But she KNEW she was cared about.

Lizzie