Tuesday, October 31, 2006

In memoriam

This morning I was slightly maudlin after hearing A-Ha on the radio. It brought my childhood friend to mind, as when we were close, she was deeply into A-Ha. She had duvet covers and pillowscases with Morten's chiselled features smiling out, posters all over her room. I think she even had lampshades with them on.

She grew up a bit faster than me, although she was a year younger. When she was 16 she moved in with her boyfriend, and I remember my Gran's disapprobrium at the time (and my complete puzzlement :D). They broke up a couple of years later and she moved back in with her parents. She was driving home from work when an unlicensed and probably drunk driver crashed into her head-on: his car landed on top of her VW Beetle. She was a hundred yards from home.

Oh, she was fun. :D We used to ride together: I helped her gain confidence after she started off quite nervously. I think she'd had a fall and that had set her back, although she was mad-keen on horses. Her parents bought her a pony from my Gran and Granddad and I used to spend my holidays at their smallholding, which is how we were introduced. We used to make up gymkhanas and jumps, and hack on the moors, (before the conservationists set a walk-only speed limit :D).

She went on to doing quite a bit of showing and eventing, (I was never interested in competitive riding: I always felt under pressure from Gran, and my Mum expressed rebellion against her at that time by being singularly unenthusiastic. You have to be enthusiastic about going to shows/events: they involve getting up early, washing hosses, cleaning tack, paying for transportation (one way or another), hanging about in the rain and wind, holding onto hosses, catching escapee hosses, a lot of standing about and some quantities of mud. And I'm not really a competitive sport sort of person anyway).

She wanted to be a model.

Her parents' marriage fell apart after her death, they had no other children and I guess they felt their future together had been killed as well.

It's odd thinking about all this, what nearly 15 years on?

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