I have a good memory when it comes to songs. I can remember where I first heard most of the songs in my music collection, whether it be riding on a particular bus, in a house I used to live in, or just an episode of a TV show. I don’t really link people to particular tracks, unless they were with me at the time the song was played.

The one exception to this is Fine by Lemon Demon.

One. Two. Three. Four

Today has a way of scarring your eyes
with negative light, but it’s a disguise.
I put on my shades and see through the lies.
The convenient truth is:

Light is on the way.
We’ll be having a fun time.
It’s such a lovely day.
We should pocket the sunshine
and never give it back
even if there’s a heat wave
or terrorist attack.
It will just be a close shave, I know.

I know… that every bomb has a silver lining, I know.
I know… it won’t be long until

everthing works out nice in the end.
The sun will marry the moon.
It’ll be fine.
Why don’t we sit back mellow again
and have a nice afternoon?
It’ll be fine.

I go for a walk.
The sidewalk is cracked.
I’m not superstitious,
but I made a pact with old Mother Earth:
She’d get off my back if I get off hers.

Light is on the way.
We’ll be having a fun time.
It’s such a lovely day.
We should pocket the sunshine
and never give it back
even if there’s a heat wave.
We’re stalling on the track.
It will just be a close shave, I know.

I know… that in a snap, all the birds will sing, I know.
I know… I’m full of crap, but still,

everthing works out nice in the end.
The sun will marry the moon.
It’ll be fine.
Why don’t we sit back mellow again
and have a nice afternoon?
It’ll be fine.

Fine…
Fine…
Fine…
Everything is gonna be
Fine…
Fine…
Fine…
Everything is gonna be

Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.
Everything is gonna be

Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.Fine.
Everything is gonna be…..

One. Two. Three. Four??
Everthing works out nice in the end.
The sun will marry the moon.
It’ll be fine.
Why don’t we sit back mellow again
and have a nice afternoon?
It’ll be fine.

Everthing works out nice in the end.

(I know…)
(The sun will marry the moon.)
Works out nice in the end…

(that every bomb has a silver lining, I know.)
Why don’t we sit back mellow again

(I know…)
(and have a nice afternoon?)

Sit back mellow again…
(it won’t be long until)

Everthing works out nice in the end.
The sun will marry the moon.
It’ll be fine.
Why don’t we sit back mellow again
and have a nice afternoon?
It’ll be fine, fine, fine, fine.

I was first introduced to this song by Katharine (who also hosts this website for me). I first chatted to Katharine a couple of years ago through Plurk, a social networking site we both used to use quite a bit. I won’t ever forget the first chat we had on something like MSN or Skype. I wound up listening to her music stream, and when I left the computer to go and wash my hair, she started playing creepy music reminiscent of Psycho. Nothing gets you out of a shower quicker than hearing scary, dramatic music, and getting mental images of the Psycho shower scene. Evil. Just evil. Anyway, we became friends, and one day, she sent me this song. She’d quote the lyrics to me randomly, or whenever one of us felt down about something. So, er, to cut a long story short, and because I’ve got 5 minutes to go until I fail this challenge, whenever I listen to this song, I’m reminded of Katharine because it’s taught me that EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE.

And I say this in the kindest way possible. Louise and Emma are some of the loveliest people I know, but they can be a bit, well, slow on the uptake. Their names link to posts insulting them/instances where they’ve pissed me off in some way, and I can usually handle only one of them at a time each day without having feelings of violence. Recently, I made a fatal error by talking to both of them within hours of each other.

To start off with, I phoned Emma because I needed to find out where we were going to meet for a gig we both had tickets to. Halfway through our conversation, I heard her landline ring. Instead of ignoring it or picking it up and putting me on hold, she said instead:

Emma: Are you ringing me?
Me: I’m talking to you on your mobile now. How could I possibly be ringing you?

AAARGH.

Later on in the evening, I decided to talk to Louise on Skype. WHAT WAS I THINKING? I discussed the conversation I had had with Emma earlier. Strangely, Louise seemed nonplussed, as if ringing the same person on two phones at the same time was a completely normal thing to do.

Louise: you could have been ringing her on /your/ house phone
Me: Why would I want to ring her if I was already talking to her?
Louise: to be annoying?
Me: ^ That is not a valid reason.

And I swear to God, she then said the following:

Louise: like an echo effect or something
Louise: oh no because then you could talk to her with two phones aw that would be quite cool

I was speechless. Mind you, I should have seen it coming, because when we first started talking on Skype that evening, she asked me what VAT was. I wouldn’t hold this against her so much if she was a tourist, but seeing as she’s lived in the UK for all her life…

Me: I can’t vote here, but can’t claim VAT back when I leave the country.
Me: When I go to Thailand, I can’t claim VAT there either as I hold a Thai passport.
Louise: aww no vat for rammi
Louise: …. wait what’s vat?
Me: The 20% tax you pay on purchases?

I should probably find some other friends who don’t make me want to bash my head against a brick wall repeatedly.

Addendum

I just told Louise I’d put this blog post up.

Me: You… You… SAY THINGS THAT NO OTHER PERSON WITH A FULLY FUNCTIONING BRAIN WOULD EVER SAY.
Louise: and i’m quite proud of that, makes me unique

One of my friends did a post about me on her blog* (which I did not ask for, just so you know), and has been pestering me to return the favour. She never said it had to be flattering, and I’m better with insults than I am at compliments, so here it is – with some help from some other friends of mine.

One of Louise’s defining qualities is that she doesn’t understand jokes, most of the time. Louise… takes things, for lack of a better word, very literally. This occasionally causes frustration amongst other friends of mine, as the people I tend to socialise with are extremely sarcastic. Louise takes whatever we say seriously (think of her as a lesser, female version of Christopher in the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time**), and responds as if we were idiots. This leads to facepalming, long, drawn-out explanations, and finally, some rage directed her way. Most of the time, she still does not understand even after we have explained whatever it was we were discussing. She also makes out like it’s your fault that what you said didn’t make sense to her, not that she doesn’t understand.

She’s also ‘the slutty one’ amongst us. As another friend remarked, “she goes for anything with two legs. Or rather, at least two legs.” I once had to pull her out of a sex shop after she had decided to go in there with a guy we’d only met hours before, and she tends to hit on men immediately after we meet them, regardless of whether she likes them or not. Awkward.

My relationship with Louise is different to that of other friends, in that I have a habit of forgetting that she exists. I don’t mean to be cruel, but I’m just not very good with names. Sure, I can list the names and email addresses of the people I talked to online 10 years ago, and can probably tell you what your friend’s friend’s pet dog is called, but I just have a problem with remembering people I’m likely to meet in real life. So, when I’m given the task of inviting everyone out, I tend to leave her name out of things. It’s only when everyone turns up for whatever it is we’re doing that day and someone goes, “Where’s Louise?” that I stop and think, “Shit” and ring her, tell her to turn up and quickly apologise.

…Let’s get onto the nice things now!
Er, she’s a great cook, “has a noice indie thrifty style”, and “is caring. In a weird way.” Oh, and she apparently has a nice bedroom. She’s also one of the more sane people I know, and that’s saying something.
Louise, we love you really. Sort of. As another friend remarks, “she’s ditzy, but intelligent. Underneath it all. You have to dig a while though.”

Please don’t try to kill us.

*All my friends seem to be blogging lately. Grr. Considering I don’t use RSS, they’re a bitch to follow (but it’s in my best interests to follow what they say). Meh.
**”Lesser version” because she definitely does not have autism. Although that would explain a lot.

Whenever I meet up with friends, I’m usually comfortable meeting them anywhere that’s convenient for them (within limits, of course; I don’t like travelling much). But if they suggest a train station in central London, my usual reaction is “HELL NO.” To explain why I’m so adverse to this idea, I’ll have to tell the story of what I like to call “the Emma situation.” …This story always fills me with a tiny amount of rage whenever I tell it, so bear with me.

The “Emma” is of course, another one of my friends. She’s one of the best people I know to go shopping with (as most of my other friends get annoyed with my attraction to shiny objects), and is normally one of the few friends I don’t want to bitchslap after a few minutes – my friends and I usually have a love/hate relationship.

Now, a couple of months ago, we planned to meet up to do some shopping (or window shopping in my case; I wasn’t working then and was therefore broke). As I was going to be in central London for another reason, I thought I might as well meet her there, as that’s where we were planning to go anyway. And so, at the designated time, I sauntered up to Piccadilly Circus station and waited.

If you’re not familiar with the London Underground system, certain Tube lines are completely underground (meaning you can’t get a phone signal at all), some are completely overground and you can use phones freely, and some are a mix between the two – on certain parts of the line, the train is overground, and you can quickly call someone, but the train soon goes into a tunnel and you lose your final connection with the world when that happens. Dun dun dun.

The line she was travelling on was one of those mixed ones; the Piccadilly Line loses all phone signal after a certain station (Barons Court, for those in the know). I phoned her and found out she was only a few stops from going underground.

Knowing she was going to be slightly late, I went to Starbucks nearby and got myself a drink.
As the shop was full and I couldn’t sit down inside, I decided to walk down the road to Leicester Square instead and sit on one of the benches. I thought I could sit down for at least 15 minutes without interruption. When she got off the train, she could ring me, I thought.

I opened up The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I started reading.

100 pages flew by. “Where could she be?” I wondered. “Surely it doesn’t take half an hour to go 6 stops on the Tube?” I rang her just to make sure. Yep, went straight to voicemail. “Maybe the train got stuck somewhere in between. It sometimes does that.” I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and carried on reading.

Another 50 pages, and still no Emma. By then, my patience had gone, and I was getting really, really pissed off. I rang her phone. “This phone is currently unavailable”, the message said, which suggested she was still underground.

20 minutes after that, and I found out she had been waiting on a platform in the station for me the entire time.

Piccadilly Circus, the station, is served by two lines/services. This means four platforms! AND NO WAY OF COMMUNICATING WITH PERSON WHO IS ON A DIFFERENT PLATFORM TO YOU/OUTSIDE BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE A BLOODY PHONE SIGNAL. Two lines/services also means I could have come to Piccadilly Circus from any direction, and used any of the other three platforms, not just the one she was standing on. Oh, and did I mention the size of the platforms and how easy it is to get to an exit without walking the entire length and breadth of the damn thing?
Besides, she already knew that I had arrived a while ago. What angered me the most is that after a few minutes of no one had turning up, she hadn’t gone upstairs, out of the gates, and outside where she could actually USE HER PHONE. What a fucking waste of an hour of my life.

I saw a major common sense fail there. And then proceeded to turn into my mother and scream and shout at her in the manner of a very angry Thai lady. Even though it’s been a while, writing this now to tell you guys why I won’t meet you at a train station – and don’t even talk about platforms to me – still brings back a large amount of the annoyance and frustration felt on the day.

So whenever someone (maybe even you) tells me they want to meet at a train station; a train station that has several platforms and is buried underground, I will usually say no. Or if there really is no other way, I will find a café or something similar outside (e.g. Platform 9 and 3/4 at King’s Cross), specify that I want them to wait there and only there, and keep on mentioning the word “outside” to them. Not on the platform. OUTSIDE, DAMN IT, OUTSIDE, WHERE I CAN PHONE YOU IF YOU’RE STUPIDLY LATE.

Neurotic and paranoid and controlling? Yes. But I’m not having a repeat of that situation again. Ever.