GOOOOOOOD!

I never in my life thought that my soulmate was going to be a female… 

If you had asked me when I was a kid what my soulmate would be like, I’d have said that HE’D have black hair, blue eyes, a big nose (yes, even as a youth I was obsessed with anyone who had a giant, sexy schnozz) and beautiful hands… he’d write me songs, paint me things and kiss my forehead almost constantly.  

Today, I look across the span of my life and realize that for all the beautiful people that I see or speak to on a regular basis, there is only one who stands out as being my exact parallel; as the one person that makes me feel more accepted, uplifted and loved than anyone else. 

Today, I can happily say that my soulmate is 5’10’’, has typically autumnal hair, massive holes in her ears and a vagina (well, two if you count the one on her left foot)…  she draws me lewd pictures, shows me amazing films and gives me pretty astoundingly beautiful hugs… ones I never, ever want to let go of. 

I found janey about six years ago… just prior to moving to England I decided I wanted to find people to be friendly with so Christopher didn’t find me to be such a burden (funny how THAT worked out, hey?). I perused Livejournal and Myspace to find people I had things in common with on a regular basis, trying to find ANYONE that might live near the place I would be living that I could talk to and perhaps play board games with. 

Upon searching for a common interest which was no doubt something like tattoos a photo pinged up. The photo was of a stunningly beautiful creature. I immediately thought to dismiss it as one of the famous and/or stuck-up models that inhabit Myspace… you know, the ones with five billion friends and no common sense? Yeah. You get what I’m talking about. I glanced at her photos, was intimidated by how freakishly beautiful she was, held my breath and clicked “add.”

She added me and we proceeded to talk about a series of topics ranging from hamsters, watermelon hats, crochet, ceramics, Dune (and our aversion to it despite our significant others' love affairs with it) and stretching our ears. 


I didn’t actually meet her in person until 2007 when, after a series of comments on one-another’s pages, it was decided that she needed to come to derby and I would teach her to crochet. We picked a weekend that would feature the reunion of my old band, Concertina Turner, to be THE weekend of our first meeting... I remember being so, so excited and nervous to finally meet her, after all those years just commenting on one-another’s pages and photos. 

I agreed to meet her at the bus stop…  I arrived and waited. I can’t recall what I was wearing, but I DO remember worrying that I wouldn’t recognize her… that despite all the photos I had seen of her, I would just completely have forgotten her face by the time the 440 from London arrived on Merchant Street that sunny afternoon. 

I remember the first thing I noticed as she stepped off the bus was her hair. It was SO red. She was wearing her brown hoodie with a panda on and was laden down with bags. I pranced over nervously and hugged her… that was the first of what I hope to be a lifetime of hugs with her. 

I remember so many special things about our friendship… I remember how immediately comfortable I felt around her… a feeling that has remained a consistent over the last three years. The times I have with Janey are amazing purely because, as I’ve said, I can be absolutely myself with no question… 

Everyone acts different around different people. Everyone tends to tailor certain aspects of their personalities around the people they are spending time with so as to not offend, hurt or cause discomfort… like, with Pow, I can’t say racist things because it offends him… around Nick I still occasionally find myself feeling slightly judged… but with Janey, all bets are off… I can do or say anything and I never, ever feel judged by her… she never, ever makes me feel like the things I do should be questioned. 

She regularly tells me how much she loves me and reminds me that we are closer than I am with most people. 

The time I spend with Janey is unbelievably special and that fact is highlighted by the confused glances and grimaces of passers-by. When Janey and I spend time together the rest of the world completely disappears and we only live for being as lewd, flatulent and gluttonous as possible. I love her and I love all of the memories her and I share, as they are the ones that are filled with the most laughter, adventure and glee. 

It was over one weekend, looking the photos of her and I together, trying to figure out which ones would make it to THE Janey blog that I decided that a random montage of photos would just not be good enough… that if I were to JUST post some of the photos you are about to see that the random viewer might not understand what is going on, so I decided that I would reminisce via photograph by showing you our favourites and explaining the logic (or lack of) for the ones where I can…

Thank you janey, for being so beautiful and such a huge inspiration in my life. I love you so much. 

these photos are important purely because of our shopping exploits. janey used to live in a place in london called hackney, which has a high concentration of caribbean shops. one in particular we frequented was manned by the gentleman in the photo on the left. he loved us and every single day i was in hackney we pranced to his shop to cause a scene and purchase as many caribbean snacks as humanly possible.. it was only by accident that one day we stumbled across a section of drinks near the front of the shop that were clearly for stimulating the sexual experience. our favourite was a bottle of "pump it up" which riled us up to no end and despite it costing nearly four pounds, we purchased that bottle... the photo on the right, that's the results of the death drink. the worst drink in the history of the world. ever.

it was believed by many that janey and i were lesbians... a fact which delighted us to NO END. a fact that we decided to make worse with a series of photos and posts on one another's walls which were, as you can see, slightly more than suggestible.

 janey and i were forever the too-old-for-our-boots girls, sitting in the corners of dingy pubs or on park benches, passing harsh judgments over everyone within eyeshot. it was decided that these two old women, they are what janey and i will look like in the future (ps. i'm on the right)

the night i left.... SUCH a good friend that she made sure she propped my tiny head up enough to get the best possible shot of me crying.

 

 mmm... yes. we were ever on the quest to look as classy and beautiful as possible, which tended to happen after MUCH cider had been drunk and MANY fags had been smoked.

 and these? they're just favourites...