Doors.
My oldest friend rang up this week .. we talk roughly every two years but it doesn't matter as it is one of those 'Weird, I feel as if I saw you yesterday' type relationships. We were at school together and hated each other. She was in the year below but I was the youngest in my class so we are actually the same age. She was an outgoing rebel with peculiar hair and I thought that she was a silly show-off. I was a sneaky rebel .. anti-authority in an underhand sort of way and she thought I looked rather scary and 'spiteful'. We met again at a party the year after I left and instantly bonded into this friendship which has lasted for the rest of our lives. God knows where the f.ck everyone else from my school has gone.

She was talking about an episode from the past which I had completely forgotten and then by coincidence the film 'Sl1d1ng D00rs' appeared on the TV just after I put down the phone. I am quite fond of this film in a cosy sort of way (putting aside the farcical charmless hideousness of both leading men) and so let it run on while I pondered the choices I have made at the many crossroads of life. The episode that she disinterred concerned her sister .. also a friend. This sister is older and just part of that generation who believed that if you weren't married by twenty-five your life was over .. so she settled for her first and only boyfriend and they are still together after a million years. I think you could describe these million years as .. not unhappy .. but 'mundane'. But how very, very different they could have been if he had not paused on the steps and missed that particular underground train.

At the time the sister's choice of husband didn't seem feeble .. it seemed exciting and even glamorous ... because his 'night job' was as the singer and frontman of our town's coolest rock band. He was actually famous within a twenty mile radius of the city centre and people recognised him in the street. One day he was approached by a member of a rival band .. not only were they less well-known than him but they were YOUNGER than he was. They were leaving to try their luck in London but their lead singer had finally succumbed to his own personal drug h3ll and had had to be ditched at the last minute. They were desperate .. and .. Oh, please .. would he consider taking his place. I think the words 'You must be joking' were used in reply. So they asked someone else .. and went on to become one of the most famous bands in the world and millionaires many times over. His own band broke up a year later and he took a job as a rather badly paid teacher ... and has been ever since.
- posted by Iris @ 2/24/2006 09:57:00 AM comment