This week I am mostly missing....

• going to Club Tropi with Shazza, Heather, Rhona, Fi Fi, Audra, Jill and Gillian and dancing around our handbags to Boy meets Girl- waiting for a star to fall,
• drinking tequila slammers with lime not lemon,
• licking the bouncers heid cos there was no salt for the slammer (sorry Ian)
• the night I ended up on a ship in Abdn harbour pretending to be the Cap'n and ordering some poor confused fellow on the oil rig to remove his pants and jacket via the walkie talkie system,
• WI's in Cafe Continental talking about naked jaccuzziness and jam making,
• making Shazza's daughter Stevi bring us endless cups of tea whilst criticising everything on MTV (Stevi makes the best cuppa ever),
• getting so drunk with Kirsty that we didn't know where we lived only that we lived in a park not a road. How the taxi driver got us home I'll never know,
• then puking in unison in our student house,
• dancing on the tables in EJ's in Torquay with Ali S, Kirsty and the gang,
• watching the sunset over the sea at Cafe Savannah with Ali G, Kirsty, Hazel, Nic, Natalee or whoever else we had managed to drag along to Ibiza with us that year,
• the night we got flown to Ibiza after Nicky won a competition on MTV and we watched Chaka Khan and Grace Jones strut their stuff,
• watching The Darkness jump across the stage in lycra jumpsuits at T in the park with Shaz and Marion,
• nearly peeing myself with excitement when we saw Tom Jones performing at Reading festival with Hazel,
• and then ever so nearly meeting him after Hazel chatted up security and let us into the back stage,
• and then Hazel waking me up in the middle of the night to tell me that Jarvis Cocker was standing outside our tent,
• getting totally caught up in the Robbie Phenomenon after Hazel and I saw him in Knebworth,
• doing Kylie and Robbie Karaoke with Paul in a 'youth club' to rapturous applause the night before Knebworth
• crowd surfing with Paul and Jim at the V festival,
• and Paul getting invited onstage with The Happy Mondays but the bouncer dragging him back off to the crowd,
• drinking wine from Jims crotch,
• making tshirts for myself, Kirsty, Ali G and Nicky proclaiming us 'Chuzzle's Angels' in gold glitter and making a matching one saying 'Chuzzle' for Chuz,
• sitting out in -20 degree iciness drinking beer with Tanky wrapped up in duvets whilst on a skiing holiday in France,
• running around London with Paul Cooke at four in the morning taking photos of the kebab shop boys pulling Iron Man poses,
• dancing our socks off in 'Heaven' with Paul and Frank and letching over the half naked men,
• driving Paul Cooke And Nic H around Plymouth in my fiat panda with Paul dressed in drag hearing him leer out of the window at a passing cyclist 'Ooh, I like a man in lycra' just as the traffic lights turned red and then watching him cower in his seat as the aforementioned cyclist wiggled his bottom and blew him a kiss,
• stalking the boys Nic and I fancied at school including walking four miles in the dead of night to deliver an anonymous poem to one of them,
• singing Deacon Blue songs to the fresian cows with Nic whilst on our way to Bovisands,
• walking for miles and miles with Beckie to see yet another ornate, quaint village in Brittany and stumbling on a village fete with streamers and face painting and a parade,
• attempting to not slaughter a Natalie Imbruglia song at Karaoke with Jase, Sparkle and Mark,
• but becuase of the magical refilling glass of beer (c/o Jase) I was probably not even comprehensible let alone in tune,
• laughing so much I was nearly crying whilst watching Jase and Mark sing Star Trekkin and singing each verse in a sillier and sillier voice,
• thinking I could act and being in one of Jasons films. I was flipping awful,
• cheating at cranium (soz Jase and Em's),
• stealing cuddles from my godsons Ben and Oliver and letting Charlotte boss me and her brothers around,
• telling my tap dancing teacher that if he wasn't nice to me I would give him a cold bedpan when I became a nurse,
• getting my Auntie Helen to oversee every tap decision like a true manager and then how she managed to get me into this nursing business in the first place,
• travelling all over England with Sparkle on the quest of yet another Dancing festival and usually coming home with a medal of some description,
• spending time in London with Sparkle on the pretence of another dancing competition but in fact spending far more time shopping than dancing,
• the time when Sparkle was working in the london Dome and we had wild late night parties with all of her new found friends,
• and how on Sparkles recommendation I got my hair cut at the Vidal Sasoon cutting school and came away with half a shaved head and the other half pink,
• and when I met up with Chris later at the Worlds End pub he couldn't cross the road for laughing at me,
• watching paper lantern people on sticks in Grenwich perform 'art' with Christophle-pie,
• memories of Dad driving at breakneck speed around the windy narrow mountain roads around the Gorges du Verdon in France and me being so scared we'd fall off the road a la Thelma and Louise. And Jamie laughing his head off at my frightened whimperings,
• and me getting my own back when on a flight back from Paris we flew through an electrical storm and I laughed at Jamie who refused to take his head out of his hands and sat curled up on the seat for the ninety minute flight,
• feeling like a princess when my dad built me a wendy house in sugar pink with real slate tiles and fitted it with running water and a working radio. It's still standing in the back garden but it's looking a bit delapidated,
• flying over Cornwall with James as the pilot, trying to find Tori Amos' house,
• riding pillion on James' motorbike searching out all the folk festivals in Devon and Cornwall,
• and drinking far too much red wine and thinking I could play the guitar whilst James played piano in his flat (I can play five whole chords now!),

I miss you all heaps but at least I have the beach, parrots and some fabulous wine here so it ain't all bad!!