Tag Archives: friend

June 3, 2014 · 9:13 am

Re-Running

My friend has started running. More accurately, my friend has started re-running. I was there when she started running, whilst we were teaching in South Korea. Myself, and another friend, woke up early and went for a run before breakfast most days. ‘Stop excluding me,’ our friend whined. ‘It’s not exclusive,’ we pointed out. ‘I want to join your club,’ she insisted. Perhaps there was something in it.

To join our ‘run club’ (it wasn’t a club, or anything approaching one, but nowadays any time you do anything not alone, people want to make it seem like a hobby), all you had to do was set your alarm. Set your alarm, get dressed, leave your room. We met at the end of the corridor, and set off at 6.30am. We’d tried a number of different routes, but generally ran the best one: left out of the school, past the empty parking lot, and up the hill. You ran past vineyards and farms and occasional bewildered locals, and state-sponsored outdoor public gym equipment and broken cars, abandoned to rust. We stopped at the top, to look down on the city, and then returned, exactly the way we came. By the time we arrived back at school, it was 7.40am, and we had just enough time to shower and dress before breakfast.

The day our friend decided to join us, we left 5 minutes late, because we wasted a great deal of time falling about laughing at her running outfit. But there was still plenty of time to get up the hill and back, we assured her. ‘A hill?’ she asked, in a tone that suggested to me great enthusiasm and delight. ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It’s great.’

We set off, adjusting our pace a little to let our friend settle in. We had been running for approximately 8 minutes, just enough time to reach the first of the vineyards, when she stopped. ‘Are you OK?’ we shouted down at her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I’m going to go back.’ ‘OK,’ we said. We were not the type of runners to pay much attention to other people. At that point in the Summer, I had already bumped into several Korean children, failing to adjust where I was looking for any one shorter than me as I ran about.

We finished our run, returned to our rooms and met each other again at breakfast. After breakfast, I realized that my other friend had a text-book I wanted, and knocked on her door to get it back. There was no answer, so I opened her door, rifled through her stuff until I found the book, and left to start my class. (We started each morning with a small rap performance by myself. There are now at least 20 South Korean junior nurses who can give you a detailed explanation of the relative merits of 90s rappers, as well as a sampling of their lyrical output).

My friend popped his head round my classroom at break-time. ‘You seen her?’ he asked. ‘No-one else has.’ I stared at him in horror. It was true, that most mornings our friend brought her class into mine, to enjoy my rapping. I had thought that maybe she was setting up a rival performance in her own classroom, and had really given that day’s show my all.

She arrived back at the end of break-time, rushing in to another of the classrooms to ask for taxi money. It took a while for her to explain what had happened, mostly because I couldn’t really hear her over the sound of my face breaking from laughing. To this day, the facts are hazy: she got lost, or perhaps she wanted to support the local economy, or her ballet slippers proved not to be the perfect running shoes she had hoped they would be.

Anyway, she’s started running again, which just goes to show that people will do absolutely anything to get into my club.

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July 15, 2013 · 11:11 am

I will never buy you a Ferrari

I was walking home from dinner with a friend last week when we passed a row of blacked-out Mercedes and a crowd of paparazzi. My friend, who was very chivalrously pushing my bike for me, pointed out that there must be some kind of event happening.

I wasn’t listening, because I was so delighted that my friend was pushing my bike for me. I have noticed increasingly that small acts of kindness have taken on a disproportionate level of gratitude- on the weekend I implored my friend to marry her new boyfriend after he got up from breakfast to fetch me another glass of juice. It’s this kind of weirdness that really prevents me from hiring a butler.

My Mother, betraying her socio-economic class, often tells us that, ‘Anyone can buy you a Ferrari. You want someone who brings you a cup of tea in the morning.’ I hate eating or drinking in bed: I think it’s unhygienic and makes me feel as though I’m a Victorian lady, hidden away from public view because of some vile and unmentionable illness, such as pregnancy.

I am aware that being pregnant is not fatal

Equally, I am delighted by grand gestures: a friend of mine recently traipsed down to the police station to collect my wallet, lost, as far as I can ascertain, because at 4am I threw it, brattishly, into the street. “I am sick of this bullshit,” Another friend recalls me shouting. I think at the time I felt I was making an important comment on rampant capitalism and the growing wage inequality, but it turns out I was just a drunken woman yelling and throwing stuff about like an arse.

So, unlike my Mother, I would be delighted if someone bought me a Ferrari; yet irritatingly I agree, in the main, with what she is saying. It is better to have a thousand small acts of kindness throughout the year than one, solitary grand gesture. Unlike my Mother, however, who thinks that throwing money at relationships is crass and thoughtless, I am motivated by simple economics: a thousand small things are better than one large one.

Which is what I tried, laboriously, to explain to my friend, when he expressed a somewhat insulting disappointment that we had simply eaten dinner together, rather than attending this much-more glamorous event he was now attempting to wheel my bike around. Unfortunately, he didn’t understand at all, and we ended the evening with him explaining firmly but kindly that even if he could, he would never ever buy me a Ferrari.

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July 4, 2013 · 11:44 am

Failure etc

“It is very important,” I said to myself firmly, my insides jangling with nerves. “To leave your comfort zone.” I read a book recently where the author speaks to their younger self: “You are smart, and beautiful, and accomplished,” She tells her. “And it is imperative you learn how to fail.”

Identifying disproportionately with this fictional character, I have been searching for something I will be terrible at. Not, one might think, too tricky a task. However, in order for this to be a fair test, this has to be a totally new experience. Which, as a grown up, is harder to stumble across than one might think. Marriage, obviously, and children- but after some consideration I felt that might be taking things a little too far. I settled, finally, on touch rugby.

Last night, my friend and I went to our first ever touch rugby game. He has played rugby at a reasonably high level since school. I bought my first rugby ball on Monday. I felt totally prepared. Until I arrived at the pitch (late, because I believed this would imbue my presence with an air of calm experience and nonchalance), and realised that I had absolutely no idea what to do.

I spent the next 40 minutes in a hell of confusion and yelling, cursing any previously held ideas about “trying something new” or “challenging myself”. The game ended, finally, and I began to reassess. “I wasn’t great,’ I admitted grudgingly. “But I think I could really be very good at this game.” Gulping water (I had expended an enormous amount of energy rushing away from the ball), I basked happily in my newfound smugness. “I am so impressive,” I told myself internally. “And brave.” Wondering how I should go about entering a more professional league, I noticed my friend standing next to me. “I really thought you’d be better,” He remarked, stealing the rest of my water. If you need me, I’ll be spending the rest of the year firmly inside my comfort zone.

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May 22, 2013 · 10:36 am

How to be perfectly perfect

My friend had a baby, and gave it to me for a bit. I was walking about happily talking to her when I bumped into another friend. ‘I didn’t know you liked babies,’ He said. I stared at him, and continued to hold the baby. ‘I mean,’ He continued. ‘You never talk about babies.’ ‘There are lots of things I like that I don’t talk about,’ I replied sensibly. ‘It just wouldn’t be appropriate’.

I looked down fondly at the little baby I was holding. You may think all babies are little, but some babies are so huge and hulking that you simply cannot help but glance wincingly at their mothers’ front bottoms when you are introduced to them. (The babies. Hardly anyone introduces me to their front bottoms). I myself, according to my own Mother, was stupendously fat as a baby. Naturally this is entirely untrue, and I was born perfectly perfect. (‘Perfectly perfect’ is a phrase I have just made up, but I feel it has great commercial potential, possibly as a slogan for a make-up range, the seller grinning with manic irony as they push their elixirs and potions onto women, telling them at the same time that they are ‘perfectly perfect’).

Anyway, I had a lovely time with my friend’s baby. We discussed the likelihood of Ryan Gosling being usurped by a younger, hotter thing (practically impossible), the correct way to eat an Oreo (with your teeth, as they come), and the gap in the market for a portable nap-sack (this is a bag, into which you lie if you wish to take a nap. Punny name provided by me, commitment to napping provided by me and the baby).

 For pleasant conversations, interesting business ideas and receiving smiles from strangers, babies are perfectly perfect. 

 

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November 7, 2012 · 11:21 am

Who’s been sleeping in my bed?

I live with my little sister by choice, because she is my always friend. For a long time, I genuinely believed that the sole reason for my little sister’s existence was to be a companion to myself. It came as somewhat of a shock to hear that my parents had actually wanted another child. Until I realised that if your first baby is as awesome as me, naturally you would continue to procreate.

It is, for the most part, fantastic living with your always friend. My little sister is the funniest person I have ever met, buys super expensive Waitrose food, and has the most enormous DVD collection I have ever seen.

This week, however, has been slightly different. It started, as most weeks do, on Monday. ‘Lucy,’ My little sister began carefully. ‘Do you have a sleeping bag?’ I looked at her oddly. ‘No,’ I replied, climbing into my freshly made bed. ‘Sleep well.’ 30 minutes later, as I was drifting off to sleep, playing one of my favourite in-my-head games, where I am perfectly and aptly delivering all the zinging one-liners I failed to think of in time in real life, my little sister thundered her way into my bedroom.

‘I’m sleeping here,’ She announced, clambering into bed next to me just as I was telling my Year 1 art teacher why my Mother’s Day gift was ‘too good for her bourgeois conceptions of art’. She then proceeded to hop in and out of bed for the next 20 mins, each journey accompanied by a turning on of the overhead light, collecting her phone, endless glasses of water, and another pillow. It was, to the best of my imaginings, exactly like sharing a bed with Margaret Thatcher.*

My little sister wakes up early, and so was long gone by the time I blearily made my way to the shower. Washing vigorously to try to remove some of the gritty trauma of the night before (my little sister sleeps so stilly that I had to check several times in the night that she was still alive), I hopped out of the shower and into the welcoming embrace of no towel. Because my little sister has seemingly developed late-onset colour-blindness, and can no longer tell the difference between blue (my towel) and green (her, certainly unwashed and rather ratty-looking towel).

As I tried to tell my Mother later that day, sometimes, it’s better to realise that, Guy-Ritchie like, your first creation is just the best thing you’re ever going to make.

*Margaret Thatcher famously only slept 4 hours a night. This is usually held up as an admirable trait, but I now think we should all spend a few moments thinking about poor Denis.*

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October 8, 2012 · 11:01 am

Recently, I went with a very good friend to Chekov’s 3 Sisters, at the Young Vic. My friend had organised the tickets (second row, no big deal), so I was in charge of organising the dinner. I very much like to eat out, but I have 2 very specific requirements of restaurants.

1. I usually bike everywhere, so arrive for almost every social occasion desperately thirsty. Any restaurant who bothers to bring me the ‘vat of water’ I have begged for quickly will instantly rise in my opinion. (Which, obviously, is extremely important to them, I imagine).

2. I am happy to spend money in restaurants. I am fully aware of mark-ups, and price hiking, and overheads and so on, and I still think that the whole arrangement is splendid- the idea that you get to choose exactly what you want, that someone else makes it, and you don’t have to clean up afterwards. I am only unhappy if I leave a restaurant still hungry.

With these requirements in mind, I made my dinner choice carefully. Having been the victim of several ‘serious discussions’ from my housemates on why ‘it is not normal to eat an entire loaf of bread for dinner’, I plumped for sushi.

I was first taken to YO! Sushi years and years ago, when it had just opened its first London restaurant. To this day, I am saddened by its later removal of the original drinks-delivery robots, who used to beep alarmingly whenever an unsuspecting customer stood in their path.

Luckily, they have continued to serve their food on those awesome conveyor belts, so, swallowing sadness about my lost robot friend, I decided to book us in there.

‘I need these,’ I told my friend, as we sat down. ‘These little at-the-table fizzy and still water taps. You know how some people have those boiling water taps? These are so much better.’ My friend mumbled something indistinctly through a mouthful of salmon sashimi. ‘You’re right,’ I continued. ‘I should start eating.’

When I was first taken to YO! Sushi I gleefully told my Mother that, here, finally, was a restaurant where you were encouraged to play with your food. ‘Look,’ I exclaimed happily. ‘The dishes go around on the conveyor belt, and you snatch them off and eat them! The person with the most empty dishes at the end wins.’ Although my Mother tried valiantly to convince me that this was in fact not correct, I still approach YO! Sushi in the same manner.

I had:

Salmon sashimi (very good, and they have lots of fresh ginger on the table which is awesome, because often Japanese restaurants are very stingy with the fresh ginger and you keep having to ask for it and they hate you and spit in your green tea).

 Chicken Gyoza (which, taking the advice of my friend, I ordered hot from the waiter) were excellent, and as somewhat of a dumpling expert, I feel confident in saying this. (I have become a dumpling expert through an arduous process of trial-and-error, shovelling dumplings into my face weekly all over the world. I am also a toothbrushing expert, but there is no need to show off).

Cucumber maki (this was while I was considering which teriyaki I wanted, and pondering the noodle question- sort of like a palate-cleanser, really. Only with more rice).

Mixed (prawn, salmon and tuna) nigri (just to check whether I preferred nigri (long horizontal rice, slice of fresh fish on top) or maki (rice in roll, filling inside, wrapped in seaweed).

Beef nigri (I was still undecided).

Soft-shell crab inside-out roll (because I love love love soft shell crab and don’t like to play by the rules- once I even ate an after-eight mint for breakfast. It tasted horrible, but that might have had more to do with it being breakfast time than being before 8pm).

Fresh crab and mango inside-out roll (because it is terribly important to eat fresh fruit, and this concoction of Fresh crab, avocado and mayonnaise wrapped with fresh mango with keta caviar looked absurdly delicious).

I would have eaten more (I am always exceptionally keen to win) but we had to pop off and see the play. My friend ate some things too, but as her end tower of stacked empty plates was far shorter than mine, I’m not sure it really counts.

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