When Helly met Philly

or how I met my wonderful husband and learned to stop worrying about everything.
I had been on my own for about eight months, and really started to look at what I was doing with my life and sorting myself out. This was happening partly as Ali laPeche was hitting her big four o, and in a crisis about what she was doing with her life, and life in general. I thought, I'd better get my act together before I hit forty, and so I started to. I decided- no more stupid relationships with rubbish men, and, that I needed to do something constructive, ie training and eventually a job/career. So I started doing some voluntary work with Release, an organisation giving mainly legal advice to drug users, but also offering a kind of counselling service on the phone. met some new people, got some confidence, then in October that year, went to Rob T's 40th birthday party with Ali la P. It was great fun. At one point I started talking to Phil-I had known him very slightly through Saffron and Rob, and even seen him play at a gig in a band with Paul in their band Defrosting the Fridge in what was the Red Lion (now McDonalds) in Brentford. I had in fact gone that night to watch Saffron's band- that would have been in about 1992.. I had also noticed him at another of Rob's parties where he had fallen asleep in the middle of the dance floor, cradling his violin. Most endearing.
Anyway there we were, chatting at Rob's birthday party; for some reason I was telling him about some of the bizarre dates I had been on, and then I asked him what he was doing in the coming week-sort of asking him out. He very gallantly remembers asking me out. Anyway we were entwined for most of the evening after that- Rob T even said it would be wedding bells next, and he was right. It was a magical evening which ended in a wonderful way with Ali, Phil and me waiting for a taxi, and lying on the pavement near Rob's flat gazing at the full moon.
Phil is so brilliant and in fact we have rarely spent the night apart apart from his initial pretense of still living at Rob's..that was on Tuesdays, and we just spoke to each other at length on the phone instead-you put the phone down first, no you put the phone down first, no you etc... we got married eleven months later! lucky us.