Last weekend I was contacted by Liam Macdonald’s fiancé telling me that our regular Talk Ivy forum contributor, moderator and friend had died from complications following an acute asthma attack.

I hesitated to post on the forum – not being sure who was who or what was what.

Liam Macdonald posted here as Liam or Liam Mac. He moderated the forum along with fnb, myself and armchaired .

Liam was young, intelligent, vibrant, funny, sophisticated – interested in clothes, particularly Ivy, and a committed environmentalist who loved the outdoors and nature. If he was alive, and I were writing to him I would call him a naturalist – just to tease him. We often teased him. He teased others. He enjoyed it. Others enjoyed it. And, I in particular enjoyed it.

Liam was young enough that many of those who enjoyed him online were older than his father. It only makes the loss sadder and more unfair.

Liam graduated in 2009 in Inverness with a BSc with distinction in Sustainable Forest Management with Forestry Conservation. He also won the Best Student award from the Institute of Chartered Foresters (ICF) and the Scottish Woodlands Prize on behalf of Scottish Woodlands Ltd.

He loved nature. So much so that he often asked me about opportunities in Australia and employment. When I travelled to Japan and talked about clothes he was just as interested in my experiences in the mountains and rural areas and what flora and fauna I had seen. He wanted to go there.

I had another personal connection. One of my brothers lives in Aberdeen and Liam was due to connect with him on his next visit to the granite city.

It may seem strange to some that an online friendship can develop across the seas, separated by seasons, time, distance and culture. But it happens. Just as it happened with handwritten letters delivered by slow ship in years gone by, by telephone and by email.  I considered Liam a friend and a sort of work colleague. He’d planned to visit Australia – at least he’d talked about it – and he would have stayed at my place.

The news of Liam’s death affected me deeply. In a way he’d become like a nephew to me and the fact that my Scottish nephew is over here talking to me in the burred brogue seemed to make the loss more acute.

Liam contributed mightily to the forum. Moderating is one of those unseen backroom tasks.  It largely involves hours of super dull deleting of spam in one form or another. Attending to various technical matters in keeping the site running and coherent and weighted further down with the frequent complaints of various participants about real or imagined slights and bias. There’s no short or medium term upside. The long term upside is seeing people enjoy a forum. Ironically, one small upside for me and Liam was the deluge of spam for Scottish Giant vibrator services which enabled me to lambast Liam both online and behind the scenes that he was behind it all. He did deny it.

Liam was a fan of early “California Beach Ivy”  - in particular the Beach Boys early days of short sleeved striped shirts, white highwater jeans/chinos and such.  Again he was teased about the juxtaposition of the Inverness climate and culture with Californian culture and surf, sand and sun.

I’m not a believer and I don’t know if Liam was.  However. I hope he’s gone somewhere where all the shoulders on all the jackets are natural, all the seams are swelled, the shirt collars buttoned down, with perfect imperfect collar roll. All the trousers slim. And. Most importantly - all the sizes are made to fit “short arses” as he would say.

I hope the outdoors team with plants and wildlife in a wonderful mixture of looking like Northern Scotland crossed with California and every day calls for white chinos, wide candy striped short sleeved shirts, sandy beaches, no midges, big surf, both Irn Bru and Coke on ice and its Fun Fun Fun Till Daddy takes the T bird away.

Rest in peace mate.  I’ll miss you.

fxh