The Story of How I Know A Girl I Know

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