Correspondence III

I’ve just been in the glory hole and pulled out an old portfolio where there is a painting I made when Bob was briefly married to Lara, it is a portrait of Lara holding a squirming child

Before Lara, Bob shared his flat with Pete who only appeared occasionally, always stoned and always complaining at length about his girlfriend and the over-intimate relationship she had with her dog:

Bob wrote:

blahblahblah ... do you remember pete who i used to share the flat with before the great era of mistake - he moved down to your part of the world in france that is with his lady and 2 kids - but unfortunately has since taken a fatal fall off a cliff one night at a party and he wasnt even drunk - tragic - he was loving it down there too . so watch your step. we spent a year in italy as it goes and that was really fab although i  was quite pleased to get back in certain respects.

will bang on about italy next time. gotta go busy with a patio redesign that never should have happened and is costing me dear.
 

oh yeah but the recipe especially is the one with the pasta and the chorizo and the parsley butter oil black pepper jarlsberg or emmental no too thinly sliced and cooked on the hob together in a kind of bain marie and then egg yolk at the very last minute. – bob jr’s absolute favourite and i have promised to introduce you to him when he is old enough to learn!!

And I wrote:

blahblahblah ... poor pete! (didn’t he date that girl with the jack russell that always licked his bollocks when they were in bed?) good luck with that patio!

I've just heard from Bob - I'm going to give him that painting when I see him 

Correspondence II

Today's Future as read by Miranda July  

I see lots of Bs in your life. Could be people whose name begin with B, or Boston, or a bee. Or maybe you need to let it BE.

good luck,
Miranda

So here I am in Bristol planning a trip to Brighton and reviewing the last correspondence I had with a long lost friend called Bob who used to teach maths and was really good at fixing stuff.

in 2008 Bob found me through email and asked me to fill him in with my news 

I said
Blahblahblah

I'm living in France...

Blahblahblah

… you still got that goatee? wearing the leathers? still the coolest maths teacher?

He said

Blahblahblah

… clean shaven no leather trousers although ive still got them as i was thinking of chucking them yesterday- and couldnt ...glad to be out of the teaching actually although it had its great moments - wasnt really the kids more the wanker staff who were more childish than the kids...that life is gone...coming to France

I said 

Blahblahblah come and visit…

My place in France (doesn't that sound great?) is an hour's drive south  of Toulouse.… looks very grand as you drive up to it … and even when you first go inside you might think it's  impressive it takes a while for the shortcomings to become apparent mainly the running damp, and some people don't like mice also we don't have doorknobs and it's always 5 degrees colder inside than out

Here's a link to one of my posts about mice 

Correspondence I

 

The day I moved to Brighton a guy turned up to fix something in the house. Looking like he’d walked out of a Jim Jarmusch movie six foot six and skinny as a vanilla pod in his leather biker jacket, razor sharp side burns and weirdly cool shades he was immediately rude and funny and we became the best of friends. 
 

He got married, I moved to Bristol, we lost touch.

In 2008 - Just before I started this blog there was an email

hello - are you Lulu that used to live in brighton - get back to me if you are, otherwise apologies

and I said

Yes it's me - how are you?

him
fuck me that was a long shot - i am good kiddo. we are celebrating 15 years of wedded bliss or something like that and are inviting everyone from the wedding to our house … would love to see you whether you can come or not. havent seen you in ages but I still cook your dishes and they are the family favourites.

i hope you are well - fill me in