LB had a good chunk of sibs and friends. We’ve a trunk of photos, drawings, bus tickets, pictures and other stuff, drawn with and for him over the years, countless activities, do’s, parties, holidays, outings and just hanging out. Sort of organic person centred stuff. Stuff that just happened.

There was one dude that LB looked up to and idolised. And that was Dan Rolland. Dan has featured on this blog a couple of times (here and here). A few years older than LB, they were at the same school. Dan was a complete character. Fruity and edgy. I can remember a school concert where he was pretending to play the sax and generally having such an outrageously good time, he was show stopping. (I think some staff were probably worried he might literally stop the show, but he was comedy genius and I laughed till I cried).

LB found him completely hilarious, not surprisingly. He’d regularly come back from school, bouncing high on his heels with delight and announce that he and Dan had been smoking weed in the playground. They were going to share a flat in Blackbird Leys when they left school. I can remember going to school for meetings sometimes and LB would be in Dan’s class. Laughing his socks off at whatever Dan was saying.

Any mention of Dan continued to make LB laugh after Dan left school. I don’t know how many time billion times he was mentioned over the years. We only had to mention his name and LB would chuckle that magical chuckle and ask more questions about Dan.

More tears when this popped up on our #justiceforLB facebook page last night. A week in which the dude has three red double decker buses dedicated to him, his legendary friend left him a message.

Thank you Dan.