fizzmeup

It’s always darkest before the dawn
- Shake it Out, Florence and the Machine

There was once an amazing man whom many of my friends (myself included) called Paulie Pants. He could dance like Fred Astaire, had a smile that warmed a room and which nearly never left his face, eyebrows that sat like mini-pyramids above his sparkling eyes, and a heart bigger than Phar Lap’s that was made of a gold more pure and more beautiful than could possibly be found on this earth.

Through all of the years I knew him, he had a wonderful knack of bringing people together and of making them feel wanted, loved, special, and cherished; this was exactly how everyone who knew him felt about him. Every Friday without fail he would update his Facebook status with “Aloha Friday!” to welcome the coming of the weekend, which for Paulie Pants and anyone lucky enough around him, always brought barrels of laughs and oceans of fun as he crammed everything he possibly could into his life. No excuses were needed for parties, they just happened because there was no reason why they shouldn’t. If there was even the slightest suggestion of dressing up for something, he was there (early!) with a Sherlock Holmes cape or a Hawaiian shirt on, a deck of magic cards in his pocket ready to entertain us with his latest trick. Paulie Pants was a self confessed sufferer of FOMS – a fear of missing out on something – and I think it’s fairly safe to say that in an amazing 32 years of life, he never did.

On Wednesday we had to say goodbye to our beautiful friend Paul, and it was the hardest thing most of us have ever had to do. There is no comprehending why a sun that shined so brightly should be taken from our sky before it even reaches midday, or how it could ever be right for there to be so much less magic in our world, but we can be thankful for having had the absolute joy, the pure pleasure, and the unbelievable luck of having known such an amazing man.

RIP Paulie Pants. We are all better for having known you. x

What were you doing a year ago?

This time last year I was kicking about in the autumnal leaves in London and acting like a kid, laughing and dancing around in their crunchiness and having a grand ol’ time!

It wasn’t all fun and games though – I was working from 8:30am until 6:00pm, which meant I was leaving home at 7:30am and not getting back until after 7:00pm. After a quick change, I’d head out to the gym for an hour or so (I had to – there was a very good fried chicken shop just down the road), come back, cook a quick dinner (when I wasn’t having the fried chicken), and then fall exhausted into bed.

The weekends passed by in a blur of cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, and coat shopping. However, I did occasionally find time to pop out for a hot toddy with one of my oldest friends in the whole wide world – Miss Mara.

This time last year, Mara and I were enjoying the novelty of a British winter (much more novel for me – she’d been there for a few of them by that stage), chatting about this new Irish boy she’d been seeing for a few months, and scoring free bottles of wine thanks to wait-staff who weren’t keeping track of us properly.

This year, I’m kicking back in skirts and sleeveless tops and washing my car in the sunshine in rural Victoria, and Mara is nursing her and her husband’s new little baby-girl, a half Irish, half Australian little red-head called Maisie! My, how much difference a year makes.