I have this friend...

I have this friend, and I’d like to tell you a few things about her.

Since I’ve known her, she has lived in an edgy and cool city apartment, by the sea and in the countryside. She likes to get around.

She does NOT like bananas.

She is an adventurer, and fearless, and believes in giving yourself challenges and goals, and then setting out to achieve them. Before I knew her, she visited the Arctic, and then several years later, she went to the Antarctic. She just decided she wanted to go, and then she worked really hard to save up and plan the trip, and then she went. Also, she bloody loves penguins.

She is very thoughtful and considerate. When I moved to a new country, she sent me postcards and letters throughout my first weeks there until I settled in. She would never in a million years fail to send a birthday or thank you card. She once gave me a necklace as a gift which was the exact match to one of my favourite pairs of ear-rings. I have no idea how she found it. The next year, she gave me the matching ring, which come to think of it, is the ring I wear every single day.

She is surprising sometimes. You think you know her, and you’ve got her figured out, and then she’ll tell you she’s lived on a barge, or that she’s been camping in Utah. Or she’ll throw into conversation that time that she got proposed to on a boat in Africa.

She is the only person I know who makes her own baked beans.

She is independent, and very brave. She has started her own business. I’ve seen her talk to a lecture-theatre full of people (without the need of a microphone). And she can pull off orange eye-shadow.

She is open to any number of mad-sounding excursions. If you want to rope someone in to do an all-day eat-yourself-uncomfortable Food Tour, she’ll do it. If you’re wondering whether it’s possible to visit all 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester in 12 hours, AND visit something cultural in each one AND have a drink AND only use public transport, she’ll sign up immediately. When I recently wanted to spend a day in Manchester seeing how many bee-related things could be found, of course she was right there with me.

She is polite, to the point of foolishness. I once witnessed her eat a whole plate of aubergine parmigiana even though she HATES aubergine, just because our friend made it for her.

She is not afraid to be different. She will hold up a sign that reads ‘Où est le Jen?’ when she meets you at a train station. She will use flash-paper to make FIRE in a job interview.

She is an excellent excellent friend, and she will always be there for you. I’ve known her to travel to another continent to visit someone who needed her. And she once came to visit me in Paris with another friend when she was DEFINITELY TOO ILL and nearly passed out about 6 times. She should clearly have been at home in bed, but she didn’t want to disappoint us.

She sometimes uses words like ‘poorly’ and ‘cross’.

She believes in kindness and being nice, and helping other people. I’ve known her for almost 9 years, and she is one of the people I admire most in the world. I’m not exaggerating when I say she’s influenced the person I am, and my idea of the person I’d like to be. When I work with children, I use strategies I’ve learned from watching her. Sure, this includes understanding the value of having something you can throw at them, or doing an impression of how not to react to a fire alarm. But thanks to her, I'm better at how to talk and behave with young people (or, in fact, any people).

When she got married, she asked 7 of her friends to walk her down the aisle. I could not be prouder or more honoured to have been one of those 7. However, I'd like it to be noted that I only ever agreed to help give her away on the condition that I also got to keep her.

She is great, and I have a sneaky feeling she has no idea how great she is.

And of course, I’m writing this today for NO PARTICULAR REASON WHATSOEVER. Any significance attached to this day or date is PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

21 Days Later

Exactly one month ago, I finished teaching a ridiculous spate of intensive classes, the highlights of which included Savage Garden’s ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’ and footage of Steve Irwin as valid and extremely relevant teaching devices. 

I celebrated my freedom, not by going out and getting wonderfully drunk, but by getting up at 6am the next morning to start my Summer break.

Over the following three weeks, I took 19 trains, 6 buses, 2 planes, 4 cars, 1 boat and 1 hot-air balloon. I travelled to England, Slovenia and Toulouse, and had friends visit me in Paris.

I caught up with pretty much all of my very best friends and family, and had an absolute blast. And you know what? It was all so freaking EDUCATIONAL. I learned so damned much. My horizons are broader, my eyes have been opened wider, I've gleaned knowledge with a capital K.

Not one to be selfish, I thought I’d share. Here, in no particular order, is the best of all the shit I found out this summer:

1. In Ljubljana, there is a superb water fountain in the shape of a kangaroo, so fashioned that in order to have a drink you have to snog the kangaroo. FUNNY.

2. Swans make a sound EXACTLY like a dinosaur if you dare to go near them or sit next to their lake or, you know, look at them.

3. French people like opinions. So, if you should find yourself sitting next to a French person on a 5 hour TGV train journey, be prepared to talk about the weather, the police, international train timetabling, sandwiches, the Royal Family and educational systems of the world.

4. Those small tubes of toothpaste you get on planes or as free samples from the dentist are WORSE THAN USELESS. And whatever is in them tastes revolting and IS NOT TOOTHPASTE.

5. Slovenia has more wasps than anywhere else in the universe. They will try to live in your beer and sit all over you. To protect yourself, you should wear red trousers and hang a paper-bag from a nearby tree.

6. I watched a video about how to tie the shoelaces on my trainers. Seriously. Look into it; you need to create a ‘heel-lock’. LIFE-CHANGING.

7. I watched for shooting-stars and meteor showers from two different locations (Lake Bled summer tobogganing slope, and the very beautiful arse-end of nowhere in Southern France); apparently it’s in your peripheral vision that you will see the action because that’s where you detect black and white.

8. I thought I was getting more independent and sure of my own mind as I get older; then a tiny old Slovenian woman broke me down and forced me into a rowing-boat in 20 seconds flat. I am WEAK.

9. There is a tiny sleepy village in France where nothing happens all year, except for a couple of weeks in August when 250,000 people come to the Marciac Jazz Festival. It was incroyable.

10. Not much in Slovenia will kill you. In fact, the doctors say you only have to worry about snakes if they BITE YOU IN THE FACE. And the scorpions are so laidback that hospitals don’t even bother to carry the anti-venom. SUPER.

11. Paris has the world’s biggest hot-air balloon, and you’re more than welcome to go up in it for 10 minutes to admire the view. You are not, however, allowed to take your ice-cream. But if you smile nicely and complain a lot, maybe they’ll make an exception. So when you then drop it, you’d probably better scoop it off the floor of the basket and eat it anyway, right Daisy?

12. At a clog-maker’s workshop in the Pyrenees (YES!), I learned about some special regional clogs with impressively long pointing-up toe bits. They used to be weapons of war but are now mainly used for dancing.

13. Slovenians are the best at naming flavours of ice-cream; collectively, we tried Cream Cake, Bled Bell Ringer and Grandma Cream.

14. My friends are great. They had amazing stories to tell me about Peru, Rome, San Francisco, Africa, Vegas and Japan, not to mention newly-hatched travel plans for Sri Lanka. They’re all busy being super and successful, starting businesses, raising tiny babies, getting promotions, buying houses, being pregnant, and I’m incredibly proud of all of them.

15. Don’t get me wrong. They’re also completely mental. One of them confessed to compulsively tidying up public toilets when he’s in them, another gets a daily email to tell her what NASA are up to, and one spent most of his childhood in an imagined world peopled by Lion-O from the Thundercats and most of the Transformers. And it turns out that in 2 couples I know (who don’t know each other, incidentally) the boy makes an unusual bird-call sort of a noise to attract the attention of the girl when in a busy environment like a shop. Sure.

16. Most of all though, I realised how fricking creative and interesting my friends are. Thanks to them, I’ve debated the ins and outs of the SheWee, been privy to 2 dystopian screenplay-plots that I hope get written, and learned about Disney imagineers, cheese-storage and Louisiana voodoo.

Guys, THANK YOU all for 21 amazing days. I am infinitely wiser and happier due to every last one of you.