Monday, September 17, 2012

For Wayne.

2 years ago today a truly beautiful soul was taken from us by a selfish bitch with no regard for human life.
My friend Wayne was the most caring, honest and friendly person you could ever hope to meet and I miss him every single day.
He always was and he always will be a source of inspiration to me and each time I come across someone who treats me badly or hurts me or one of my friends I'm always left with the same thought "why couldn't it have been you? Why did such a beautiful soul have to go and leave you here if you're not going to help make the world a better place?"
This probably makes me a horrible person to wonder such a thing as no one should wish another person dead right? But how can one person, a person who once chased a bus to give a stranger back their wallet they had left, how can that person be the right one to take and leave so many evil souls behind? I don't get it.
For all of us who knew Wayne, we're the lucky ones. We get to carry his memory with us always and remember the infectious laugh and random sayings. I feel sorry for anyone who never met him, your life will never be as bright as mine and even though the candle is gone, the light will always shine forever in our hearts.
On this day and every day in fact I miss you and at the risk of sounding like a bad celine dion song: I will always love you, you smelly hippy.
For my friend
Wayne Moores.
Xx

Friday, September 14, 2012

Gotta love the cheese!

So those of you that know me know that I love my cheese. It's just a statement of fact like saying that all politicians are soulless thieves or that the bible was a series of bedtime stories written to keep the minds of impressionable children in line and in their place. So when my friend (let's call him roger) suggested we go to a real west country cheese festival you can imagine that I was as excited as Gary glitter at a nativity play.
Oh, and just so you know, I changed the names of the people in this because I didn't ask their permission but most of this actually did happen apart from the bits I like to fabricate for dramatic effect. It's my blog, I'll do what I like!
Anyway, I'd arranged to get a lift with another friend (let's call her Rachel) the night before so that we could all get up nice and early to give us maximum cheese festivaling opportunity. We should have known that as soon as we stopped in tescos for a few nibbles and came out with a couple of bottles of vodka, some cider and three bottles of pink wine that we were heading for trouble.
So we get to rogers house who is by now bouncing off the walls because we're late and the drinking commences. Now, I'm not going to go into everything that happened that night for the main reason that some members of my family actually read this (knew I should have made this anonymous!) but suffice to say we're all that little bit closer now and the birds were starting to sing by the time we all collapsed into bed.
Now seeing as one of rogers friends had said that he would come and pick us up to go to the cheese festival, we had to be out of bed by 10am and ready by 11. This is not a problem for roger who is like road runner on speed but Rachel and I sleep on unaware of rogers preparations.
At around roughly 10.30, I am nudged gently awake by a metallic feeling somewhere between my eyes and the tip of my nose so one eye flips lazily open while the other tries to remain in the land of nod for just a bit longer. The first eye can't really compute what it's seeing so elbows the second eye into consciousness whilst frog marching brain into gear as it appears that I am staring into the yawning maw of a double barrelled shotgun. This is the reason I am telling you this story, the cheese was just a ruse for this is the first and hopefully only time I will be awakened in this way.
As the sleep clears from my eyes and brain, I follow the line of sight up the gun where roger is stood, beaming from ear to ear, fag dangling from the corner of his mouth (for the American readers I do mean a hand rolled cigarette not a small gay man although that may give a certain visual something to the story), wearing a deep pocketed green wax Barbour jacket over the tiniest pair of underpants with a fur lined deer hunter hat complete with moose horns on his head.
"D'ya think I'll fit in?" he asks removing the gun from my face and drawing in on his fag, "or should I wear a smock?"

Now I know I said that I do sometimes fabricate for dramatic effect but that actually did happen and is pretty much the reason for the whole blog post but if you really want to know about the cheese festival well, it was alright. The sun was shining, there was cheese, there was cider with the obligatory small fly and pieces of grass floating around in the bottom of the glass, there were bales of hay and a punch and judy. Can't go wrong with that now can you?

Oh and roger didn't wear his gun toting country bumpkin outfit or his smock thankfully as judging by the rest of the festival goers he would have stood out like a sore thumb.