My oldest friend

Here's a poem I wrote for my friend Millena on her birthday. It's a little hokey, but I like it anyway. FYI, Hockerill was the school we stayed in for a weekend of intense rehearsals on the school play of Billy, where we first made friends. We bonded over the fact that we could both play 'Oh will you wash my dirty socks' on the piano.

Also - I know I'm meant to be moving my blog. I kinda started. But it confused me so I stopped. I'm working on it.

My oldest friend 

My oldest friendship is a boat

that glides through golden seas. 

We sail together, sharing secrets,

perfect you and perfect me.

We drift past faded memories 

of when we first were kin.

Washing dirty socks at Hockerill,

striking a pose in your kitchen.

We've docked a port at Whirl-y-gig

sparkling and star-eyed, we would roam.

On a mission, we'd dance til midnight,

when my dad would take us home.

Every Thursday night, our rowing boat

would cruise right to New York.

But we will never be on a break - 

this ship is too strong for that talk. 

Our boat beat storms in Bulgaria,

by conquering waves of wine. 

We've daydreamed around Greek islands 

and we've lost all track of time. 

Today our crew has new members: 

Rosch and Polly, Rachel and Jen.

We traverse the seas together,

plaiting hair and swapping men.

Our friend ship will sail forever

never creaking, never leaking. 

Our boat could sail up waterfalls

and never let the tide in. 

When we are old and rickety

our ship still won't let us get wet. 

We'll take an oar each for eternity

and row into the sunset.

New year, new you

So it's 2013... a whole new year, a whole new start, time for a whole new page. As such, I can definitively state that I will never again eat anything unhealthy, miss a yoga class, drink booze, stay up too late, spend too much money or re-watch episodes of the Big Bang theory when I could be reading Jane Austen ever again. Ever.

Every day will start with a bowl (just one) of wheat-free muesli and a cup of hot lemon water. Ok, so I don't like hot drinks and never have (hot is the devil's temperature, as Kenneth Parcell once so memorably said) but I hear that hot lemon water makes your skin clear or smoothes out all cellulite or eliminates third world debt or some such, so it seems a small price to pay.  

Lunch will be home-made soup every day in the winter and home-made salad every day in summer. All packaged in recyclable tupperware. Never again shall I feel the heart-wring of guilt as I throw away, willy nilly, another fast food wrapper that once contained nothing but expensive calories. Expensive, delicious calories, to be sure, but nothing tastes better than the smugness of knowing you made your entire weeks' lunch on Sunday night for 32p... even by Thursday lunchtime when it's started to go a bit limp... right? 

I shall home-make every dinner entirely from brown rice and steamed vegetables, and yet every night will be a different adventure in cuisine that will delight and sate my friends in manners they didn't know yet existed. I shall throw away all takeaway menus and never darken the door of the chip shop again. Even if those chips are delicious golden rods of sunshine, each and every one of them, and even though I do want to, you know, like support local businesses and that. Would that make it ok to buy chips just once or twice in the year? No, definitely not. Probably. I'll get back to you. 

In order to augment this new, slimmer self, I shall also become leaner and more flexible and stronger. I shall get up at 7am every day and either do some yoga or sweat through a crazy Shred workout with that buffed up lady lover Jillian Michaels. Did I say 7am? No, surely 6am is better. Everyone knows that the earlier you do your exercise, the better it pays off. Real athletes (yes, correct, that's me) are sweating while the rest of the world is still dribbling into its collective pillows. I shall swim every other lunchtime and do 30 sit-ups before bed every night. I'll be so ripped by February that you'll be able to grate cheddar on my stomach. I'll be so toned that the rain forests will spontaneously start re-generating in honour of my biceps. 

I shall adopt a panda. Two pandas. A whole raft of pandas. I'll keep them in my garden, which will always be mown and weeded and pretty. I shall finally undertake that upgrade from vegetarian to vegan, and I'll spend weekends in my lab perfecting vegan cheese. I shall heat my house entirely with rolled up socks and teddy bears, and I shall use all my old Socialist Workers (which I'll definitely start reading again) to wrap the home-crafted presents I'll be giving you all for your birthdays. 

Every week I will make a budget of exactly what I can afford to spend, and I will spend £20 less than that and save the difference so that I am not living out of bins when I'm old. My tube journeys will be spent entirely focused on psychology papers; my evenings on Capital-C Clever novels and brand new music, not Absolute Radio 90s. Unless I've got a cold, in which case I might give myself special dispensation. But what with the new me living entirely off mineral water and organic fruit, I doubt I shall ever catch a cold again. 

Every DJ set I do will be the best one ever, and I will really learn properly what all the little lights on the mixer mean. I will never again have to ask a boy how to turn the volume in my headphones up. I will take at least one fantastic photo every day and fully master the concept of aperture. And yet at the same time both DJing and photography will remain effortless hobbies and I won't get hung up on being perfectionist. I can do all these things at once, right? 

I will write a hilarious and thought-provoking blog every single week; I will spend every bus journey I take writing profound poetry; I will walk instead of driving; I will drive faster and better and I'll never get lost again; I will only ever say things that are at once clever and thoughtful, and I will never act without thinking again. Although I will also be spontaneous and free-spirited and stop being so tied to a schedule. 

I will do all this and I will do it with style, verve, elan and elation, and with all of the things in between. And I'll start tomorrow, do you hear? Tomorrow! Everything will change!