As this is my first ever blog, let alone
guest blog, for A Girl I Know I thought the best way to introduce myself would
be to regale you with a potted history of our friendship.
It was 11 years ago that a bubbly Londoner
breezed into my life. I was working as
an office junior for a firm of solicitors in little old Leek and she had moved
up from London and started working for her step-father (The Boss) who was the
firm’s resident property developer. We
got chatting and realised that she was only a year older than me but had a
boyfriend and baby at which point I jammed the franking machine as both were
alien concepts to me. I was a country-party-girl
whose weekends were spent drinking in some pretty unpalatable establishments
where your feet stuck to the floor and bucket dancing occurred.
Soon the boyfriend was no more and after she
asked me to a hen do one night we became firm friends born out of a joint love
of going out dancing (or darncing as they do down south) and having very random
things happen to us on those nights out.
To me she was the cool city girl who brought me out of the country and
to her I was the ‘It Girl of Leek’ who still helped old ladies across the road.
Along with another friend we had a Friday
night ritual. Firstly it was JD’s for a
few drinks which always resulted in us doing our individual party tricks: M a headstand, me the splits and S putting
her leg behind her head (it seemed like a good idea at the time). It kept us so
entertained I’m astonished that it didn’t stop the bar going under shortly
after! Then it was onto the town’s club
(note the singular) Metropolis (or “Trops”) to dance to “Crazy in Love” and “Dirty”.
And then there was the time we went on a day
trip to Blackpool………….we thought we were in Blackpool, we drove onto a
beach where we could see the tower (in the distance) but we knew something
wasn’t right. It turns out we were in
Southport!
In the meantime I went to university and she
progressed in the world of property development. I met my husband through her, in fact it has
been said that if she had not had a baby and moved ‘up north’ I may never have
met my beloved. She was at my graduation
when he was in Afghanistan and then I started practising at the same firm of
solicitors which meant we worked in the same building again.
By this time we were of course more serious,
professional individuals or at least that was what The Boss thought when he
sent us to a networking event together at The Panacea in Manchester. This was our first time at such an event, our
story was that she was property and I was part of the legal team but we knew
nobody so we decided to take a seat to the side for a while, have a glass of
wine and then spy who we could start to mingle with……………and that’s where it all
went wrong. A few glasses of wine and cocktails later we were having such a
merry time drinking between ourselves we got so drunk that we missed our train
home, ended up paying £120 for a taxi back and not much networking was done.
And that is the story of how A Girl I Know
literally became a girl I know. These
are a few of the highlights of our friendship and a few weeks later she was
chief bridesmaid at my wedding. Things
have not always been rosy though, at times we have struggled to be there for each
other as much as we would have liked to have been and there was a point where
our lives had become so different we questioned whether our friendship could
survive especially when I moved 200 miles away to Winchester. But it did.
Through lengthy emails and phone calls we rebuilt our friendship again,
indeed it has become stronger and now we are bonding through blogging. I just hope that one day I get to pay her
back for the stallion stripper she organised for my hen do!
Thank you for reading my post, I hope it made
you smile as there have been many laughs throughout the 11 years we have known
each other. My own blog You Can Take the Girl Out of the Country will have it’s first
post on there shortly.
Jo
