@abimF1

I wrote before about how Twitter - all social media, in fact - changes us. It can become an echo chamber, reinforcing our prejudices and stereotypes, narrowing and limiting the world for us. But it can also become a gateway to a whole new world, full of interesting people living lives very different to our own.

I guess I'm foolish enough to believe that that could be a positive thing. That exposure to other people, living other lives, can be enriching, that it can bring us all a little closer together in an understanding of our shared experience. That it might just make the world a slightly better place. 

But nothing is wholly good and good is not possible without bad.  With that connection to other people's lives comes an exponential exposure not just to all the happy events that life can offer but the sad ones, too.  So it was with @abimF1, who died last night.

I didn't know her personally, so I can't claim any of the grief her family and friends are feeling. I watched her struggle from the other side of the world through my iPhone screen, which is to say I saw very little of what she was going through - only what she chose to reveal. But she was a positive presence in my feed; brave, funny, feisty... I liked her and I wanted her to be well. We interacted a few times, mostly on a Sunday, talking about the Grand Prix. I enjoyed those contacts, and I'll miss them. 

RIP Abi; you fought hard and now it's time to rest.