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...

 

nine days...

With less than two weeks until I leave now I am finding myself doing the same things that I did when I left America… 

All those years ago, when I was just days away from leaving I severed ties… I’m not sure why, but I did. I found myself pushing away the people that I loved the most. Looking back now, six years on, after catching little signs of myself doing it again, I can see that it might have been a way for me to make it easier for them to cope with my leaving… it was an awful thing for me to do because as a result I lost precious time with some people that were very important to me. The time that I lost with Ashley I can never have back and I hate myself for the way I acted… I hate how volatile I turned and I hate every horrible word that I said to her. I turned into this bumptious little creature that only wanted people to offer her the exact support that she wanted or they were not allowed to be her friend (and omg she WOULD delete you from her Myspace!) 

Before, when it happened I blamed it on the people I was pushing away, insisting that they REFUSED to be happy for me so I DIDN’T need them in my life (yes, I was overly dramatic and nineteen). In the weeks before my departure I began hanging out with people I had never really hung out with and ignoring the people that had loved me and supported me for years… I fabricated stories in my head that justified me not returning their calls or not going out on playdates with them when really, towards the end, all they wanted was to say goodbye and all I needed was the love of a supportive friend. I blatantly avoided both and now there are some friendships that I will never have back fully. 

Today though, I see it happening again… I see myself refusing to go out or not replying to texts and justifying it by saying that nobody’s been in touch all this time and now that I’m two weeks away from leaving they’re coming out of the woodworks, so why should I bother now? Urgh. Poison, that is what that is. I realize within an instant of thinking a thought like that that I am being unreasonable and stupid… I realize that I need to just get a bloody grip and stop taking part in this destructive parade again… I realize that what I am doing is trying to make it easier by avoiding having to see faces, more for me this time than anyone else… 

Right now, it hurts to see certain people’s faces. Where I used to go through my photos on a regular basis and work on memorizing the faces of the Nick, Franny, Chris, Vic and Janey… i can’t now. I’ve not been able to go through my photos in nearly a week for fear of falling over into an inconsolable heap of tears, snot and stomach cramps. Their faces make me hurt because, for the last several years, they have played leading roles in my everyday life and the fact that I now have to cut them from the cast list due to site relocation makes me want to die a little (please note, I am aware that I did not list Pow as one of the faces that I typically spend time memorizing and that is because… well… his face has been memorized over and over again and it’s gone bigger than mere facial recognition now. SEE BELOW.)

A lot of the time I just want to be a recluse (not the arachnid, but generally just hermitting away). I tend to want to stay at home and crochet or watch films without having to actually face any of the reality of the situation, which I know isn’t healthy… I need to make sure I am living these last nine days to their fullest potential but at the moment, I don’t want to… I don’t want to go out and have to be reminded of all the things I am leaving, I don’t want to have to start saying my goodbyes just yet and I don’t want to have to start having those final talks with people. 

The fact that I will be leaving in less than two weeks is made worse by the fact that people have now started telling me how much they will miss me. Despite the fact that I KNEW I was leaving and I KNEW that some people would miss me, I had anticipated that a lot of people would realize I’m not really THAT great and just get over it rather quickly which would be less emotional for everyone concerned, but they’ve not and it’s not. People are telling me how much they will miss me and I don’t know how to respond beyond, “I’m going to miss you too.” It’d be nice if it stayed at that, but then, THEN they want to take it further and tell me WHY they will miss me, which forces me to have to think about why I will miss them, which in turn forces my eyes to water and then makes me look like my eyelids have double chins. I don’t like for my eyelids to have double chins, it’s not very becoming. 

I love that people will miss me and I wish I had the actual strength to talk about how much I was going to miss every single person individually with them, but I don’t because I hate crying in front of people and I hate showing actual emotion. I am fine offering random and dramatic displays of emotion for show, but real emotion? Nothanks! I guess the best way for me to progress this post is with a list, hey? A list of people I am going to miss and why… I know I will most likely miss people off and most likely a lot of the people on this list will not even read it, but it’s here, just in case they do stumble across it and also to help me process… 

Pow… I typed his name and had to take a break… the thought was slightly too much. I go through phases where I want to watch him as much as possible but other times I can barely bear to look at his face… his big, sad eyes and giant nose, the face that I have become almost as familiar to me as my own of late is not going to be with me every day now, and, well, at the moment, as described above, I am spending more time memorizing other things about him than his face, as that’s been memorized a billion times over. Lately, it’s been his hugs. That’s what I’ve been attempting to learn. I drive him crazy by asking for no less than five hugs a day and he always supplies them with a huff and then a giant squeeze, occasionally a back-scratch. He grabs me with his giant frame and my chest immediately becomes tense because I know that these hugs are the last of them… after ten days I will not have another Pow hug for a long time. My chest knows this and my heart follows suit and tenses up, making my head go all fuzzy and my eyes start to water. He squeezes me and I inhale, attempting to memorize the way he smells (as if I hadn’t already filed THAT olfactory wonderland away in the old memory bank  five years ago under “safest smell in the world”)… lately, for me, my memories have needed to be more than just visual, particularly with Pow.  I know him so well and as much as I love seeing his face and all the different… sigh. I can’t think about his face right now. Just know that this boy, it will kill me to leave him. I try to make sure I tell him every day how much I will miss him but he always brushes it off with a joke… he doesn’t deal with emotions very well, but he has been amazingly good at dealing with me and my ways of coping with leaving. I have gone through such severe ups and downs with the move and he has held my hand and told me it is okay through every little second of it. I have no idea how I would have gotten through these last four months without him, no idea at all. He’s a solid rock and an incredible friend… the friendship I have with him is better than any film could depict and bigger and more complex than any solar system (UFOs and all). With Pow, I will miss nightly moviedates, dinners and hugs at the top of the stairs before going to bed to text until we fall asleep.  I’ll miss phone calls even though we’ll see one another in five minutes, coming home to hear him tell me about all his revelations from the day and working on projects with him. I can’t bear to think about not having his giant, stupid smile trying to cheer me up when I’m having a hard day and just thinking about the moments that I will miss him singing me impromptu Pow songs makes me feel like staying. I love him and need him just as much as he won’t admit he needs me and am terrified of how I will react to that last hug at the airport. 

Janey… whoa mama, this is a big one. If possible, her and I have bonded more in the last month than we ever have… we are closer and know more about one another than ever before. She is a stupendously incredible friend who has helped me through some bloody tough and occasionally sticky times and I love every single thing about her. She makes me feel completely confident, beautiful and generally okay about myself, and that is something I cannot say about any of my other friends. I am going to miss an endless list of things about her, but for a much shorter period of time as Muffin and I will be flying out to visit her for my birthday and then she will be coming to visit us for Christmas. With Janey, I’m going to miss morningtime phone calls, lewd texts and racist chats. I will miss eating everything all the time, being seen as ridiculously annoying by any shopkeeper ever and people-watching with sometimes embarrassing consequences. She has opened my eyeballs to a lot of things and I will never, ever be able to replace her, and I wouldn’t want to. She’s miraculous. 

Nick… for as little as I see him or speak to him, I never, ever find myself doing anything but being completely mystified by his existence when we DO meet up. He is so personable, fun and energetic and I love that about him. He never misses a beat when there is a need for a funny comment or silly dance. He’s always on hand to make me laugh and smile and give me a beautiful hug when necessary. He’s one I will miss bigger than most because he has played such a huge factor in pulling me out of my rut after my divorce and helping me through seeing Chris in public again. Nick has been so supportive and is really a genuine friend who cares not just for me, but also for what my actions will do to others. I am going to miss the late nights with him after everyone else has gone the most… the nights where we sit in the garden or inside, me with Buddy on my lap and him with a pint in his hand, talking about everything and nothing all at the same time. I love Nick and I love the things he brings out in me. God, with Nick I am going to miss his face, the inside jokes, the pub, his songs, his dancing, working in the kitchen with him and his voice… god I am going to miss his voice. I am certain that aside from his hair, that’s my favourite thing about him. 

Franny… effortlessly beautiful; that was the first thing that I needed to say. Now that that’s out of my system, I can move on. When I first saw Franny I was completely in awe of her stunning face and how beautiful she could make a pair of sweatpants look. I mean, how is that POSSIBLE?! For months I would go to the pub and watch her face (which makes me sound like a stalker… it must be said that i openly watched her face, not from some seedy corner of the pub with an overcoat and hat on and a glass of whiskey in my hand, but from the bar or from the table in the middle of the pub in front of the bar)… she has an indescribably beautiful face that I could stare at forever. I remember we began bonding over some random game on the telly… it was Wales vs. France from what I can remember and I was openly berating Wales (I was not conscious of the fact that this is where Franny is from) whilst gushing about the hairy players on the French team. It was that night that we began talking and from there we have progressed into dinner dates, smoking sessions and endless hugs. I love Franny and wish she was more confident… I am going to miss seeing her make everything she wears look incredible, smoking fags in the beer garden with her and her uplifting texts, which always seem to arrive JUST when I need them the most. 

 Charlie… in the time I’ve been in England I think I’ve only seen Charlieface about five or six times… very brief but incredible visits. We can go months without talking but the instant I see her and our arms are wrapped around one another I remember everything I love about her. she is painfully beautiful and talented… I adore her face and eyes so much. I wish so much that we had spent more time together in the time I’ve been here, god I wish so much… but I can’t help but know that the brief visits we have had were special and perfect in their short-but-sweet glory. I am going to miss the text that make me want to cry and I am going to miss our brief visits so much. her hugs are so beautiful… she’s fantastic and I’m so glad I’ve met her. 

Christopher… as much as I didn’t want to be married to him, I will still miss him. I will miss seeing him places and remembering times when I didn’t hate his face (which, to point out, I don’t hate at the moment, fyi). I will miss knowing that there is someone around town that knows as much about me as he does… someone who will offer me the knowing glances of a hardened ex-husband after seven years in the “danie slammer” (which sounds a bit like a euphemism and was not intended as such… it was more meant to mean that he spent seven years with me, learning about me and with no escape). I still occasionally find it to be quite a foreign concept that we were married and now we’re not, so I will still occasionally miss seeing his big face around and having talks with him. I worry that all ties with him are going to be severed and the thought of that upsets me… he’s a good person and the thought of losing him from my life completely makes my heart hurt. 

Lee Lee… oh my tiny little jewish sensation… my heart hurts for him so big. I added him on Myspace years ago when I saw him on Pow’s friend list and was shocked by how beautiful his face was… not much time passed before I realised his face was not the only beautiful thing about him and fell hard for his jokes, eyes and smell… Lee Lee works at LUSH and therefore HAS to smell amazing constantly (it seems to be a contractual obligation for all LUSH staff). That is one of my favourite things about him and the instant I receive anything from him I smell it, I smell it and fall in love with him all over again. Lee Lee has a sense of humour that is very special to him… the jokes he tells and the way he tells them are particularly funny because it’s him that says them… he and I do not see one another often but we speak on the phone regularly and write when one of us can remember… he is stupendously perfect from a distance or close up and I will miss our conversations, letters (which really shouldn’t stop just because I’m going to America because they will only be BETTER once I’ve moved), beautiful nose, eyeballs, laugh, vegan sass and random LUSH gifts. I can’t believe how happy I am to have randomly added him because of his beautiful face all those years ago. Thanks my little Jewish pancake.

The Tattoo Boys… special in their own private way… if one were to look at our relationship from the outside they would wonder why I hang around there, but I love those boys so much and secretly, they love me too. Kevin, Thomas, Greg and Lee are four of the most gentle, lovely boys in the land and every time I go in the shop I get the perfect mixture of sass and wonderful from them. I love them individually for specific reasons… Kevin because he’s incredibly talented, interesting to talk to and is a genuinely nice, sweet person when you look beyond all the tattoos and scowls. Thomas is incredibly gentle… he tries to put on a front when he’s around Kevin but he’s a young lad that has a really good head on his shoulders and is quite possibly one of the kindest people I’ve ever met in my life. They are all tremendous fun to hang around with and my days in the shop go by so quickly with their banter and stories. I will miss long tattoo sessions and talking about music, artists, ink, aftercare and my ex-husband. I will miss the horrible names we call one another and flipping them off when I see them on the street. I will miss them so much and never, ever trust another tattooist as much as I trust them. 

EVERYONE ELSE…
Goncalves, Challis, Graham, Hannah, Dave, Jax, Leigh, Shaun, Tom, Alison, Judith, Eleanor, Will, Potterton, Mitzy, Karl, Reno, Luke Winn, Don, Pete, Meek, Tree, Culleton, George, Esmee, Tanya, Eddie, Shawn Kenney, Mark, Antonia Bee, Lester, Jaacqy, Buddy, Missy, Thuy, The man from the Caribbean market, Stafford, Theo, Emma, The girls in the Guildhall Market, Dave, Russ, Emma, Liz etc etc... i need to post this or i never will... 

I ain’t the way you found me and I’ll never be the same…

This post will hopefully begin a long series of blogs about the most special people in my life... I want to reflect back on my friendships with them and create a more concrete reminder of why they are so special to me. 

Primarily, my entries will be for the people in England that I love and will be leaving behind for a year… keep your eyeballs peeled for an entry about YOU!


Through my last twenty-five years i have had the most amazing string of people run through my life... people that have altered me in ways I never, ever knew possible. The first one that always springs to mind is Pow... he's the one constant that I’ve had, the one person who, despite all the shite I’ve been through, has stuck by me... he's seen me plummet to my worst and pushed me to achieve my best.

Out of everyone in my life I speak to him the most and trust what he has to say the biggest.

I met him on November 21^st 2004… I remember it almost perfectly. I was stood at the stove in the tiny kitchen of 68 Friargate… I was stirring some misc. sauce in a pan when the door went. Stuart had been telling me about him most of the morning… this boy that used to have long hair, played Jesus in a film and had a breakdown which left him living just a mere 0.1 miles away (a two-minute walk) on his own.

I had only been in the country for two days and was generally feeling quite nervous about new people, so I busied myself, attempting to stir the sauce I was tending to extra-hard so as to appear super-domesticated and to hopefully avoid having to talk to him.

Stuart went to the door and within forty seconds the giant face that I would eventually come to love so much popped into the doorway of the kitchen and said hello. He was wearing black trousers, a white t-shirt and a black suit jacket; the one I am oh-so-familiar with now, and have even worn on a couple of occasions (my favourite memory of me wearing it being the night of our first sleepover… we took photos of Pow dressed as Jesus in the back garden and I didn’t want to freeze to death, so I stole it from it’s home on the back of Pow’s computer chair as he whisked me outside with my camera).


I turned and abruptly said hello, only noticing for a brief moment how beautiful his face was and feeling bashful because of my being an American and new to the world of student life and artists/musicians. His visage was only in the doorway for a short time before making its way the three paces to the lounge where he 
immediately picked up a guitar and began to play whilst talking to Stuart and my then-fiancé. it was that night that I very first fell in love with his voice… I cannot remember exactly what song he sang, but I know that from the first moment I heard his voice I was his biggest fan.

Four days later Christopher and I went to a gig… fancy-dress. I was horrified and did not participate. I put on my faithful stripy blue shirt, tied my hair back and marched to the pub to meet with Claire and Mark. The bulk of that night was spent talking to Pow. He was dressed as a Lounge Singing Hitler and gave me my first Dr. Pepper cocktail. I drank a shocking amount and left. It was this night that the first ever photo of Danie and Pow was taken (the first of godican’tbelievehowmany).

Other dates from the first few years float around in my memory. I remember going to the First Floor with Claire to dance and Pow showing up after multiple text-attacks… we talked, he hugged me and he watched me.

I remember one incredibly warm night we were walking home from Union Blue and I was far too drunk to cope and he held my hand so I didn’t fall over and die. I remember being alarmed by how large his hands were in comparison to mine (which isn’t hard, as the only people with hands smaller than mine are babies).


I remember showing up to one of his open mic nights and him coming and giving me a giant bear hug…  I asked him to sing me a pretty song and he sang me “Creep”  by Radiohead. I’ve not been able to listen to that song since without thinking of him and that night… the night he wrote his list for me.  

I can remember mostly every single tiny detail about most of our interactions… I remember constants from our time together like him watching me, our ability to talk like nothing matters and how comfortable I felt with him immediately…


The month after I moved here we had a Christmas party and Christopher and I had a massive fight after most everyone went to bed. I was laid in bed with Christopher shouting at me… texting Pow and he told me to come out. I went to the lounge, left Christopher to sleep and drank with Pow until the wee hours of the morning. after that incident Pow was always the safe place for me… which is why I can now see why I associate him and his very limited-edition scent with being safe. Every single time I was having a tough time he welcomed me into his house with a cup of tea and we would sit on his sofa and talk… his sofa has heard just as many of my secrets as Pow has.

Neither of us can recall how or when the REAL bonding actually started taking place. For years we were mere acquaintances. We spoke casually on messenger when we were both on and sent one another random texts, but from 2004 until 2007 our friendship never stretched beyond the realm of me emailing him when I had a bad dream, texting him and occasionally popping around. When we were both in the same locale we would hang out and talk, he would sing for me and I would fall in love with his voice…

For some reason, I am not entirely sure why, it all just popped in 2008. That year we suddenly started having lots of movie dates and going on adventures. I wish so much that I could recall what exactly spawned it… it was around May and we had both decided we wanted to stop smoking and to start swimming, so we made a pact. We made a pact and since then we have really… oh I don’t know. The friendship I have with Pow is like no other friendship in the world. I love him so big and I know everything it is possible to know about him and seem to have the very special ability to deal with his very interesting character traits with impeccable ease. The things that he does that I put up with, I could never imagine putting-up with them were it anyone else. There is a part of my heart that loves him an extra-special amount and allows me to filter the important from the unnecessary… I have been able to mould my existence around him to create a harmonious relationship that is good for both of us.


There are just things I do with him that I could never do with anyone else. Cooking and eating offal, skinning and tanning a pig’s head, breaking into disused buildings… he’s a remarkable person who, whilst some people may see him as a bit of a joke or a flake, I see him as this amazingly beautiful, strong and sometimes misguided person that I love more than I love most people.


He is so unbelievably smart, talented and knows me bloody well. From the way he collects things to put in my book to the way that he knows JUST what treats to buy me when I need a pick-me-up; he is the best friend a tiny danie could ever have. He always surprises me with the things he remembers or the things he does for me… the small, lovely little things that he does to make me smile when he thinks I might need it.

I love every single little moment I get the chance to spend with him and HATE the fact that I am going to have to leave him in forty-eight days. I hate the fact that I will be leaving behind the one person that knows me better than anybody else in the entire world. He knows everything about me… every single tiny thing, and puts up with it with no questions.

Whilst I have many, many friends, Mr Powers is the one person I spend more time with, have more in common with and ache for the most… he is so fragile and I just want to help him to achieve all the things he’s helped me achieve. He is the one who’s pushed me to start creating the things I have, to start baking as a tiny Danie business… he’s the one who’s supported me through all my hairstyles (but only because he’s had just as many) and lifestyles. He’s amazing and I could never, ever ask for a better friend in a billion years.

Thanks Squishy… 


Now, please see a series of my absolute favourite photos of us, ever.