I have not written about P before.
That is partly because I’m not confident that my words can do him justice.
But it’s also because loss can do funny things to people. It can make you claim a closeness that others don’t recognise, as you grapple with your own emotions and try to make sense of them.
I don’t want to do that.
There are others who knew P better than I did, so I’ve waited, because I didn’t want to speak on their behalf.
But he was my friend too, and now the time feels right.
So apparently it’s London Fashion Week. Or LFW as those in the know seem to be calling it.
Now, I like to think of myself as a fairly open minded kind of person, with a broad range of interests. But when it comes to the F word, I struggle to count how many damns I do not give.
It really, truly, genuinely baffles me that otherwise quite sane people can go into raptures over a heeled shoe, a hat or handbag.
You know how some writers shove a manuscript in the back of a drawer, convinced that it’s worthless drivel, then return to it years later and discover that it’s actually bloody brilliant and it secures them a six figure advance with a major publisher…
Well…
I’ve just had the opposite happen. I’ve spent the last ten or so years convinced that my student journalism days were golden, that I had spent my time at university effortlessly churning our several charming and original pieces of writing every week; from hilarious reviews to insightful interviews and ground-breaking news stories.
Sadly, when I recently unearthed a box full of old Student papers and peeled apart the curling, yellowing pages to read my first attempts at a writing career, it turned out that they were nearly all crap.
What a lovely thing I found yesterday!
When one of my great aunts died, at least ten years ago, but probably closer to fifteen, I remember spending some time helping my mum sort through her belongings. I picked up two very old autograph books, which had belonged to my great uncle as a boy, and asked if I could keep them.
I came across them again yesterday when I was sorting through boxes, and I had forgotten how absolutely beautiful they are. Both are leather-bound, with ‘Album; embossed on the outside in gold lettering. One is dated 1918, and the other seems to have entries dating from 1924-1926.
“High school days are the best days of your lives…”
How often did you hear that nonsense line uttered when you were a teenager, eh?
Someone put a picture up on Facebook the other day of a staff photo from my former high school. According to the silver lettering embossed on the frame, it’s from 1999. I would have been sixteen at the time, and these were the teachers I saw every single day, week in, and week out.
I am shocked by how few of them I remember.
There are two or three I am still in touch with – friends of my parents, or parents of my friends – who I could comfortably stand in the street and make conversation with. There are probably another dozen or so who I either liked or disliked a lot, and their names are still easy enough to call up in my mind.
But then there’s the rest. A nameless mass of smiles and suits, made up of individuals who may or may not have once stood before me in a classroom and imparted their knowledge on noble gases, imperfect participles, and quadratic equations.
Dorkymum | Stories from Tasmania 