Caffrin

I'm still doing these posts!

I felt like watching Anchorman tonight (it's on right now) and it always reminds me of Cat, since she quotes it every so often on facebook/twitter. She had the Glass Case of Emotion as a signiture on one website too ... oh, and when we went to New York last year to see Drake Bell/Paul McCartney perform (not together, obviously. Though if you watch Chasing Destiny, you see Drake playing with Roger Daltry) the flight had Anchorman in it's film catalogue (that was sweet, watch what you want when you want). She was giggling to Anchorman as I read/cried over Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen, since my TV was broken - the cabin crew definitely tried to get us drunk to stop us complaining.

So ... Cat. What can I say about Cat to try and encapsulate how I think/feel about Cat? I don't know if I actually can, so I'll tell a few stories. And then, if you try and mess with Caffrin ever, realise it's a deathwish, okay?

Cat and I went to see My Chemical Romance at The Underworld in Camden just after I got back from New York a few years ago - I'd gone to the Warped tour, a pop-punk festival, with a friend of ours called Ama. There was only a few tickets, and Cat scored a pair, and I snuck along. It was a pretty funny day, we started queuing up early and started talking to some of the other girls queuing. At one point, we were sharing oreo's I'd snuck over from the States (double-stuffs, I think) and this tramp comes stumbling up to us ... I'd feel sorry for him but he almost fell on us. Never seen so many punk/goth types move so fast! A little later, nearer the start of the concert, we'd moved a little closer to the entrance, but it was by the pub entrance (if you've been to the underworld this will make sense. The Underworld is the club under The World's End pub. We've seen Mark Read and Ben Adams from a1 there, and Dave from Son Of Dork. And countless bands in the club) anyway everyone around us started screaming and rushing forward because Oh Em Geeeee, MCR were crossing the road, coming directly for us. Catty got caught up in the OMG-ness, and when she turned back to see why I wasn't with her (I was marking our place in the queue like it was my lifeline) she started laughing because everyone else was getting shoved aside by bodyguards, and there I was leaning on the door frame, nodding to the band and bodyguards going "'sup?". So if you don't act like a crazy fan, you get within inches of the band easy.

We went to France when I was pregnant with my boy, to see the French GIAN. To be honest, it was crap, the French don't dance. Everyone was excited about The Used (I've seen them before. Bert is crap, kept interrupting to say 'don't hurt each other' when Brixton was barely moshing) but after a big intro there was nothing. Motion City Soundtrack, The Sleeping and New Found Glory were easily the best things in that line up. Cat was into Aiden back then, so she joined in on the Wall Of Death while I tried not to get hurt. We went to the Louvre on one of the days, and ended up with our feet in the outdoor fountains. It was so blooming hot! We (or just me) bought so much crap we never ate lol. It was my first time flying with Easyjet too ... craziness!

Once, at uni, I had a few 'issues' with my LEA/my money (something to do with paperwork and having £2000 cancelled at once. ouch). I was living on porridge for like, a week. And during that time, Catty sent me a care package. I still remember the note, it was like 'I can't afford to give you money, but I can't have you living without the taste of chocolate' - there were a couple packs of crisps and a few chocolate bars. And some wooden roses I still have. No matter what happens, I'll never forget she did that for me. You can't repay acts of kindness like that (not because she gave me chocolate, that she'd send anything full stop).

In New York, I suffered really bad jetlag - I fell asleep at the Paul McCartney concert (it was awful, it was like 'you're a musical genius I'll never get to see again, but isn't 4 encores enough? Oh, and thanks for having Billy Joel on stage, his 'Vienna' is my favourite song EVER.') and Cat had to keep prodding me along so we could get the last train from Queens to Port Authority, and then back to Newark. She was so patient, and I got so annoyed - not with her, though I was all for sleeping on the station floor - with myself for being all helpless and not me. And the next day we had such a laugh in the car to Drake's concert in Atlantic City, talking to our driver Paul for two hours (we ordered a basic sedan and got a stretch Limo, score!). Paul was a bank manager who drove for his friend in his spare time. He taught us some American insults (we love Chickenhead. Birds, in America, are women who fly from one guy to another. Chickenhead's peck about, from guy to guy to guy. I love American insults, they're so visual) and we taught him some English ones. On the way home, we got pulled over for speeding ... and OMFG the road police in American programmes aren't exaggerated at all. "Why were you speeding?" *explanation* "Don't backtalk me." Ummm ...

We loved our hotel too - we had pizza hut for room service, and Men In Black was on when we got there. Because it was on my parents timeshare, we were on an exclusive floor, so you had to use your door key in the lift to get there. We had our own room on the floor for breakfast too, so we didn't have to pay. There was loads to eat there! First time I ever tried French Toast ...

We went to our friend Kelly's, with Charli and Jodie, last February. Cat and I started slating the Twilight books on the train, and Charli and Jodie shut us up because they hadn't read them yet, lol. We slated in code. At the train station on the way back, we all joined in with Cat's signiture picture pose, all trying to be caught in mid-air. Didn't work too well with 4 of us trying from different directions lol.

Cat's like this magic energy, I feel so happy just being near her. She's hysterical but caring, so she's just what you need when you feel low. All my happiest memories have Cat smack in the centre. She's come out with some cracking one-liners too, half the 'quotes' section on my facebook came out of her mouth ("Look, Inspector Morse!" At Bakerloo station for example).

Oh, and I called this 'Caffrin' because we jokingly called her that after the way Catherine Tate says her own name. We made Cat common, lol. It's the commonest thing about her, she's way too special to actually be common.

Jodie

Continuing my 'why I love my friends' posts (they'll be intermittent, but I'll try and get through everyone) since I'm once again between books ... Jodie.

I've known Jodie for about 7/8 years now, roughly? Again from the internet. We met properly 6 years ago, at Thorpe Park - about 20 of us all went. It was the first thing I'd ever organised and I fell in love with organising trips after that ...

I thought we gelled right away. We'd always been able to talk online, but sometimes the internet is a completely different ballpark to real life. I've met friends online before and not known what to say to them, really (Starr, Stefanie, Jessica ...) but with Jodie, it was different. We kept squaring up to each other, pretend fighting, so everyone thought we hated each other, so we kept doing it to wind other people up. We went on 'X: no way out' and when we came off, there were steam jets over the path ... so we pretended we were blinded by it. We got a few odd looks off people who weren't in our group, but that's just what we're like together.

We've gone through so many things together, even though we don't live near each other (strangely, though we're probably geographically closer, I can get to our friend Cat's house in half the time it would take me to reach Jodie) - A week in Southend, various gigs, trips to London, stalking Dougie from mcfly on a train (accidentally. He happened to be going to Nottingham when we were going to Luton. We actually tried not to get on the train after him, found we were in first class, doubled back to the first cheapo seats, sat down and there he was across the aisle. Best half hour EVER), my trips from my uni to hers (especially when I started going out with her housemate. Which I blatantly only did to see her every other week), train hair, train surfing, TITWANK, mcfans, team pokage, Thunderbirds, Mcfly gigs, Back-To-Front comma's (I talk in my sleep. Jodie tells me what I say in the morning), Margarita's spilt in Chiquito's, Frankie and Benny's, Barbeque Chicken, endless talks on whether Chinese or Italian food should come second to Mexican, dud fireworks, drunken Rock Band, chocolate and New Look and the latest Me2You/My Blue Nose friend paraphenalia.

I can't imagine life without Jodie now. I don't know how I survived High School without her, or Cat, Charli and Kelly for that matter. If I have news, she's the first person I try and tell. Of all my best friends, I'm probably closest to Jodie (and here's where I find out, actually, Jodie's fond of me but wouldn't go that far, lol), not to be offensive to Kelly, Cat or Charli ... I just find I have a little more in common with Jodie. Maybe it's the age thing, since there's 7 months between me and Jodie, rather than almost 3&1/2 years like there is between me and Cat.

I just hope in ten years time, I get to say that all four girls are still my best friends.