friendship – Page 2

What Will Be Will Be Fine

This was what was supposed to happen: I’d meet Russ some time on Saturday afternoon, we’d hang out a couple of hours, he’d leave after dinner for a party he’d been invited to, and I would then pack in some hardcore study for as much of the night as I could manage.

This was what did happen: at some point during dinner I reminded him about the party; at some point after dinner he decided to skip the party. At some point we were faintly aware he’d missed his last tube home; at some point I looked out of the window and it was no longer dark. At every point we talked. And talked. And talked.

I crawled into bed at 6 am, curling myself around what felt like an intense core of happiness, gripped by the conviction that what we have will withstand the stresses and separation to come when I leave England, that our two worlds will continue to have space for this.

Things I Want To Remember

I’m less than satisfied with the event-record ratio I’ve managed on this blog lately. For simple practical purposes, I can’t seem to remember what I do without writing it down any more. More significantly, there’s a backlog of things I do actually want to write about, and the neurotic symbolist in me wants to get them written down before the year ends.

I want to remember the frustrations that built up to an unhappy last Thursday, and also how prolonged ranting to a very patient Russ (over Berwick Street trawling

[conversational excerpt, paraphrased –

Me: Look, I know this sounds pathetic but I really know what will cheer me up right now will be buying an album. I really want to bring a new album home with me to listen to tonight or I’ll be really depressed.

Russ: Here, I’ll hold those you’re carrying already so it’ll be easier for you to flick through the racks],

jerk chicken at, er, Mr Jerk, and coffee in the smoke factory that is the basement of Costa on Old Compton Street) reminded me of that long-running question: what did I do to deserve him, and how do I bottle it?

I want to remember amazing crispy pancakes at Song Que with Alec, suddenly looking around stunned to see all the chairs upside down on all the other tables, the proprietors (and their kids) patiently waiting for us to finish, and cheerfully wishing us a Merry Christmas as we stumbled out a little embarrassed.

I want to remember a cozy Saturday afternoon finishing The Hours (wonderful), swaddled in a duvet while rain pattered on the skylight, alone but not lonely.

Food With Friends

So I finally decided to act like the social being anthropologists tell me I’m meant to be, and got a life.

Friday lunch with Vikram at a Chinese in what I think is now called H20 Zone, where our suspicions that we’d been given a tourist menu (photos accompanying every menu item) were confirmed when we peeked in another menu (which they told us was for “drinks”) and found it photoless and about $2 cheaper across the board. So we ordered our crispy baby squid (another ticked item on the summer food list) and sambal brinjal conspicuously from the photoless menu, and were charged accordingly.

Dinner with the Twins and their parents involved more ticking of the food list once they’d discovered a list existed and insisted on getting me satay and a baby coconut in addition to my chicken rice. We drifted and lounged and chatted around the Raffles Town Club pool, probably well-raisined by the time we got out to do girly things like hair masques and steam-rooms. There was the pleasant feeling of lives that had moved on and developed almost wholly independently of each other but which could still be described out of more than politeness (because we wanted to), and responded to out of more than avoiding awkwardness (because the connections that power conversation were still there). They still refer to me as “hoggie”, short for hedgehog, because I am apparently “prickly but cute.” I would have suggested just “cactus” instead myself, but suppose old friends are allowed to do things like tell me I’m cute without being killed with blunt objects.

Happy Ending

I’ve only just come to the stage of post-examness where writing for the blog begins to feel like a growing necessity rather than the enforced sidetrack from Getting A Life that it would have been in the past few days.

There is nothing wild or bacchanalian to report. Company Law went much better than I’d expected, and I left quickly after exchanging a few perfunctory words with the few people I actually talk to in the course, nothing of substance; there was no feeling of Here Ends Undergraduateness (assuming I pass), no lump in the throat.

It’s an illustration of my general lack of connection with the social aspects of the law faculty, I guess, even if I will miss the lady in the cafe who worried aloud that the owner of the purply coat left behind (mine) would be cold and since then always reminds me to take it with me when I leave, the lovely Irish security guard who always tried to calm me down every time I was desperately apologizing that my debating tournaments were keeping him there overtime (we always got him some whisky to make up for it), and strangely, the roadworker on a long-term job on the road to the faculty, who chats me up every time I walk past and tells me I’m pretty even when I look bloody awful.

I grabbed a Time Out, a Marks & Spencers lunch, and made a long list of things to do, both practical and frivolous. I went shopping – the makeshift stall on Goodge Street again proved itself an unlikely treasure trove when I found Adventures In Foam (Cujo, 2 CDs, £10), reeled back in disbelief, and snapped it up hungrily. Oxford Street yielded two skirts and a garish top.

Last year the night the exams ended was celebrated in typical style – dinner, pub, club till dawn. This year I had dinner with just Russ (in Carluccio’s, which I loved. Can’t wait to try the one in St Christopher’s Place). It felt right, celebrating the end of my undergraduate life at UCL with a friendship which I count among my most important achievements at university. I didn’t feel the need for anything more glamorous.

When Harry Met Sally Can Kiss My Ass

[Posterity Note: Written last night while merry. Somewhat embarrassing in the cold sobriety of morning. I admit I still stand by the sentiments, though perhaps not by the sentimentality.]

It’s been far too long, I know. Even as I write this I am painfully aware of the 5980 or so words of my dissertation I have yet to write, and the vast unexplored realm of legal knowledge that was meant to have been this year stretching out before me, but right now I’m probably too drunk to be able to do real work and therefore resort to writing this.

Why this drunkenness, you wonder, and what is she drunk on? I’m not particularly drunk on alcohol, I must clarify. Half a bottle of wine and two Smirnoff Ices do not a drunk Michelle make. I am drunk on the sheer bliss of the click, the connection, the comfortable conversation, the warmth of a glance, the joy of remembered and continuing fondness. I am drunk on laughter and the honeyed sound of a trumpet in a smoky pub. I am drunk on love, platonic but long-standing and equally intense as all the other kinds, just in all sorts of different ways.

There is no cure for the blues quite like a night out with people you love. Tonight was dinner with Nick, ostensibly to celebrate our recent birthdays, but really just the impetus we’d been needing for the longest time just to get together and revel in the glory that is us. The Social in Angel yielded some good wine, an extremely good steak for Nick, an interesting rabbit risotto dish for me, and talk, and talk, and talk, as good as it had ever been, as if a gap of months had never happened. Russ joined us later in The King’s Head, where the two boys enjoyed themselves shouting rather embarrassing and intrusive questions at me over rather good renditions of jazz standards.

To describe it more would make more, or less of it than it was. It was a night out with two of my best friends. It was a night that answered creeping and somewhat irrational fears of “Have we grown apart?” with a resounding NO. It was a night that reminded me, although I hadn’t forgotten, that you can love and be loved in all sorts of ways. I was blue earlier this week. I’m not any more. Other things contributed to this, but tonight was the turning point.

Have You Got Your Bloke Best Friend Yet?

The April issue of New Woman (purchased recently while in a mood for temporary aberration) informs us all that this season’s must-have accessory is a bloke best friend (BBF). This is splendid – for once in my life, not only am I in fashion but I’m quite sure I trump most of the fashionistas because I’ve actually anticipated this trend by two years.

What’s even better, of course, is that Russ is an extremely affordable and hassle-free BBF compared to what the article posits. I don’t need to keep buying him booze or suffer through endless conversations about the footie. I enjoy numerous perks such as company on marathon walks through London, Paris and Amsterdam (he also navigates), escort services to and from clubs complete with protection from dodgy men while within (it also helps that he tends to be the best dancer in the room and carries our bottle of water most of the time), lastly, much spoilage and indulgence but also brutal honesty when needed.

My point, and I do have one, is that BBFs are great, and I’ve got one of those classic ones that’ll be worth millions in years to come. A vintage Chanel, or Vivienne Westwood, if you will. (Russ proceeds to disown Michelle as best friend and sue for libel.) So rush out and get yours if you haven’t got one, girls, and you can only steal mine if you deserve him.

Elsewhere in frivolity, my pop tart of a boyfriend is better acquainted with Gareth’s and Will’s videos than I am. This is most vexing and I think a serious clarification of our respective roles in this relationship should be undertaken, pronto.

Other areas of concern are that he treats the proper cooking of a spatchcock as a matter of import on which worlds will begin and end. This perversion, at least, is mitigated by the dreadful joke he makes later involving the replacement of the “p” in “spatch” with an “n”, which reassures me that he is indeed base and vulgar the way a Real Man should be.

Working Lunch

Epic fusion lunch with Mark on Monday involved leftover claypot rice with lap cheong (Chinese sausage; Mark popped some in his mouth and asked what was in it, I said probably dog, Mark spluttered a bit), fusilli with pesto, chicken kievs, cherry tomatoes, and mouldy bread.

Other features of lunch included surprisingly efficient planning of Tuesday’s debate workshop, managed far more successfully than all our previous attempts at planning sessions because at those we always end up wallowing in mad gossip and agonizing over respective affairs of the heart – today we were in the dining room and didn’t have the requisite privacy.

We also tried formulating a cunning plan to discourage a girl who’s after him and needs to know she’s barking up the wrong tree (so to speak). One possibility was that I call him a “fucking faggot” in front of her. The problem with this, of course, is that it calls for careful planning and judicious implementation, because otherwise I might end up just looking really, really mean. His solution to this: “Oh, just say you’re post-menopausal…pre-menstrual…oh, whatever, female bits, you know…”

Oh, Mark. I may have spent most of two hours last night shouting “All men are bastards/fuckwits/arseholes!” (with a long-suffering but highly entertained Avril), but not you, never you.

Happy Birthday Fabric

I’ve been meaning to say: Happy 2nd birthday, Fabric. I won’t be around for your third, though.

(Which depresses me slightly, even though Friday night didn’t evoke the sheer glee previous excursions have managed. I haven’t quite decided if I’m mellowing, or Fabric’s lost something, but it was, nonetheless, nice to be there with Russ and remember us there two years ago in its opening weeks, our first weeks at university, going to Fabric at 9 pm absolutely determined to get in, talking for hours before we started dancing, me clueless and flailing in my first drum’n’bass experience, him the epitome of non-camp-male-dancing coolness that he still is, walking back to Ramsay Hall in my decidedly unsensible shoes, talking, talking, talking, and two years later here we are, and this friendship has only gotten closer and better and stronger along the way.)

Introducing Mark

Apologies to Mark aka Debating Underling aka My Bitch for causing his public humiliation in a computer room, where reading this site caused him to behave in a decidedly strange manner, eventually involving a loud snort.

A big thank you to him as well for being generally lovely and taking a bit of stress off me this week by agreeing to tackle the dastardly forces of Union bureaucracy to book rooms for a debating tournament we have to organize next academic year.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject: everyone say Hi, Mark. People who know me in real life, or perhaps people who’ve been reading this blog for a while, will know I dabble a bit in university debating, and write about it in here on occasion; when I do, a name that’s cropped up reasonably often has been Nick: debating partner, co-manager of the UCL Debating Society’s involvement in intervarsity debating, and great friend and wonderful company through it all.

Nick has, unfortunately, graduated and got himself a swanky job, but in his place enters Mark, who is Intervarsity Convenor and will definitely not be my underling, whatever I may say flippantly from time to time. (He might still be my bitch, though. We’ll see.)

So that’s a name that might appear here a little bit more in future. When you read “Mark is an utter twat” or “Mark is such an angel”, I’ll probably be referring to him, so now you know.

Happy Birthday Russ

Those of you who’ve been reading this site for a while will have come across references to Russ, my best friend in this country, and a prominent feature on my worldwide list as well. It’s his birthday today.

Most of what I’ve written here about Russ doesn’t really do much to sum him up in any substantial way, but what I think it does reflect is the fact that he’s a constant in my life in this country, a touchstone of sorts. A listener. A confider. An honest but understanding critic. A renderer of invaluable practical assistance. A source of comfortable companionship. A crucial causative factor in my future death from mobile phone overuse-induced brain cancer…

Due to my general uselessness these past few days, I haven’t managed to get him anything yet. But what I can manage for today, which admittedly isn’t much, is this:

Various Aspects Of Russ As Seen In This Blog:

Tech Support Russ

Moral Support Russ

Rower Russ

Christmas at Russ’s.

Russ Invades.

Addiction Warner Russ

Freaky Telepathic Russ

Paris with Russ

Photographer Russ

Reassuring Presence Russ

Very Tired Russ (on my 21st birthday)