First Contact
I guess I'll start from the beginning. Or our beginning at least. The year is 2003, it's in that long long holiday that you have for some reason at university, where the exams are finished early and the next year is a world away in October. In an unusual bout of clarity I realised that this could be the last summer that was going to be like that. In the October I was starting my PhD at Strathclyde Uni in Glasgow, and the summer holidays wouldn't be the same routine of coming back home.
The sun was shining all summer and I've got really vivid memories of lying in the back garden with my mum and Tom after they got back from the club, looking at the stars on warm, clear, crisp summer nights. I played computer games at my sister's house on a Sega Dreamcast that her friend brought over, eating pizza from Pizza Shop 1 or Pizza Shop 2, which were next-door rivals. Playing Virtua Tennis, never getting bored. Playing some amazing rhythm game, where you were a spaceship driving down any one of a number of tracks. Each track was a different instrument, and if you didn't get the groove, the instrument wouldn't play and then getting back on track was near impossible.
Fast-forward twenty years, and here I am staring at the Wii that Siobhan used to love playing Just Dance on. Her excellent rhythm just one of her magnificent talents. She was never happier than when she could show her moves. We've got a big old poster in the kitchen: when in doubt, dance it out!
I digress.
In that long summer holiday, we had family over to my mum's house. It was my younger cousin's birthday, and we were playing in the garden with bubbles. I know this for a fact because I have a photo of it, and this is the first day I spoke to Siobhan.
For her part, Siobhan had gone back to uni after a couple of major operations, and had moved into Glasgow to a flat in St George's Cross. Having decided to move out of that flat, she decided to risk-it-for-a-biscuit, and move into a two bed flat and advertise for a flatmate.
She found a flat on Roslea Drive in Dennistoun, in the East End of Glasgow. Then she put an advert online and waited. I guess this wasn't the early days of the internet as such, but it was before the all-pervasive thing that we have now. I'd found a university-run accommodation site where you submitted interest in flat-shares via a web form, and that would be forwarded to the folk looking to share. I'd responded to a few of the adverts, and planned to see some flats when I got to Glasgow. And whilst I was playing outside, the phone rang, and it was the first of the potential flatmates to call back.
"Hi - this is Siobhan - I'm calling you back about the room in the flat"
"Hiya - great - sorry I've just been outside playing with my cousin, it's her birthday"
I'm told this detail endeared me to Siobhan immediately. She loved kids, and being playful and silly. I arranged to visit the flat the first day I was in Glasgow. And it's funny how even my own reasoning process can be burnt into my memory sometimes, especially when I'm stupid. The advert online mustn't have had her name on, because I had to ask again: "Siobhan Murphy" she said. I very clearly remember thinking, "like Che Guevara, and Michael Vaughan" as I wrote down "Chevaughan Murphy". I don't think anyone could have spelt it any worse. That won't be the last incident I talk about where I get things wrong, but I also got things right on that day, or at least things fell into place.
Summer of 2003 - I salute you. An amazing summer of warmth, idling and meeting the love of my life.
Love, Pete x
Afterword
I sit and write these words the day after our twelfth wedding anniversary, the first without Siobhan. It's a bank holiday Monday, and I put Radcliffe and Maconie on BBC Sounds from yesterday, from our anniversary. It's something I would do with Siobhan - we'd rarely be awake for the breakfast show starting at the weekend, but we liked to listen and we'd just catch up whenever we could. To my surprise, the show is exclusively playing songs from 2003.
What synchronicity, on our anniversary, playing songs exclusively from the year we met. And one of those was Hey Ya! by OutKast which was our song to dance to at a wedding, or a party, or anywhere. Is there a better song to express a simple joy and an uncynical fun? Listened to the whole show end to end. Apparently their album of the week had been Fever to Tell by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Also a huge fixture in our musical lives. One of the bands that we didn't get to see live, but we would have loved to.
Much love, and shake it like a polaroid picture, when you get the chance x