Ian, Chris, Rob, Bridget and I attended Martyn's funeral yesterday. The ceremony lasted about 40 minutes and was non-sectarian. The entrance music was "Nights in White Satin" whose chorus's sad wailing of "how I love you" was quite haunting and, for me, a bit gruelling as well - give it a listen from the perspective of hearing it at a funeral and you'll see what I mean. An independent funeral Celebrant named Gloria Pattinson read Martyn's biography. Did you know he achieved a first in physics at Imperial College or that he wrote a programme called HGopher which he sold to a company in America that paid him enough money to buy his red Mazda MX5? His time at Virgin and with you was recounted as something he looked upon fondly as was the CAD award we won for the Verve web site in 1998 which he was clearly very proud of. No funeral is easy but as funerals go this one was particularly difficult in that the ceremony was continually punctuated by the antics of Martyn and Sit-Yen's two year old daughter Isabelle who, oblivious to the reason we were there, was determined to run about and screamed when prevented from doing so. She was happiest when standing in front of the room, facing what to her must have seemed an extremely strange captive audience of grim faced people with tears in their eyes. The terrible irony of this was lost on none of us. At one point she pointed to an empty chair, looked over at Sit-Yen and I'm sure I heard her say "dada". During the committal stage of the ceremony, Isabelle climbed the two short steps up to the lectern and the Celebrant picked her up and sat Isabelle in her arms. To the strains of Justin Hayward's "Forever Autumn" (" 'cause you're not here") she turned so that they faced the casket as the curtains closed in front of it and, at the celebrant's prompting, Isabelle waved bye-bye. I lost it at that point. I'm losing it now just thinking about it. Andria Vidler, EMI's CEO, generously sent a wreath on behalf of EMI even though she never met Martyn and probably didn't know who he was. The wake, which took place in the function room of a bar/club in Blackheath, was odd in the sense that it was a traditional British style wake - finger food and beer - but since Sit-Yen's family are culturally Chinese, I got the feeling that this wasn't a tradition that they necessarily shared, but graciously went along with anyway for the sake of Martyn's side of the family: his mother, father, his sister and her family along with dozens of his friends and colleagues including Harold Gluck from Imperial College who was one of the few people other than close family to have seen him after he was diagnosed. It was a difficult day and not something I would wish for anyone. Still, I'm sorry you couldn't be there with us. I will miss him.