Friends, sisters and pals

We'll always be bosom buddies, friends, sisters and pals


Friends
Going travelling for a year means having to say goodbye, at least temporarily, to a lot of people. One of the hardest was saying goodbye to someone that I’ve been seeing for nearly ten years, someone who I feel so comfortable around that we can sit in silence just as easily as we can sit chatting constantly, someone who knows what I want without me having to say anything. Still, my hairdresser seemed to take it quite well when I broke the news to her that this would be my last haircut from her for some time.


Sisters
Sisters. If you haven’t got one I suggest you pester your parents to get one for you as they are great. My sister has kindly agreed to let me use her spare bedroom for storing some of my belongings while I am away so that I can rent out my flat. I packed up my entire music, DVD and book collection the other week and sent it up to her. Within a day she had sorted my DVDs into three piles, which she named:


1. “Things I want to watch”;
2. “Things I have seen before but would watch again”; and
3. “Your sort of crap that I would never watch”


I think the last pile consists mainly of my Murder, She Wrote box sets.


Pals
So I can’t leave the country without having a bit of a leaving party. I worked backwards from the date I set off on my travels looking for a suitable date. A friend's wedding on 28 May and mother's 60th birthday celebrations between 19 and 21 May, Saturday 14 May was settled on as the date. Hold the date email sent, Facebook event created, diaries duly penciled.


One small problem, I made a schoolboy error of not checking what else was on that night. Result? A clash with one of the biggest events in the gay calendar, the Eurovision Song Contest. How could I have missed that? For anyone outside Europe, the ESC has been a career-changing event for many musical greats (with past winners including ABBA, Bucks Fizz & Celine Dion). Career-changing for other acts too. Who could forget Scouse duo Jemini, whose off key rendition of “Cry Baby” became the first ever UK entry to get nul points? The answer to that is pretty much everyone has forgotten them. Anyway, I digress...


Simple solution, find a venue to hire and show the ESC before carrying on the party with some better music. Better music is of course a relative term, I’ll be creating a playlist from my iPod and my friends tell me I have the music collection of a 14-year-old girl (which I chose to take as a compliment).


Anyway, I’ve even found a bar close to where I work (and the leaving party comes the day after my last day at work) which seems quite a fitting way to celebrate leaving work to start this new exciting chapter of my life. It is time for 80 Gays Around the World to stop being an idea and to start being reality!




“We'll always be bosom buddies, friends, sisters and pals” 
Lyrics from Bosom Buddies from the musical Mame