Sarah is a fantastic person. She's a teacher in a school in Tower Hamlets and she's a die-hard Spurs fan. She has supported them since, as a young girl, the great Gary Lineker captured her heart!
I would not, under any normal circumstances, have ever met her. Our paths were so unlikely to cross for it to be almost a statistical impossibility so the story of our friendship is an extraordinary one.
Late in 2000 I started to miss my beloved Spurs, the team I've supported all my adult life and, during the thirteen preceeding years, had been going to home games with my husband. After our separation, I found it impossible to imagine a life without the Spurs so I commented to my friend one day that I was thinking of advertising in my local paper for someone who would go to games with me. She thought I'd probably meet a psychopath so tried to talk me out of it and her husband hit on the idea of advertising through his company's electronic bulletin board so he could 'vet' anyone who responded.
Anyway, a few days later I had a call from Sarah's husband who thought she might like to go to games with me as he was a season ticket holder at West Ham and didn't want to go to Spurs with her. Our first meeting was a bit strange - we'd arranged to meet in a Central London tube station and we'd described ourselves to one-another. It only took a few minutes for the awkwardness to wear off and soon we were chatting and exchanging stories like the oldest and best of friends.
That was three years ago and our friendship has grown and developed since then and we now have season tickets next to each other. We share our hopes and dreams on the train each week and we regale each other with the stories of the twists and turns of our very own daily kitchen sink dramas.
I love the story of our meeting - to me it says something about fate and how even the most unpromising of things can turn into tremendously fulfilling relationships. Sarah, on the other hand, likes the mystique of our friendship - she says she describes me as her friend 'oh you wouldn't know her' to her pals and they think I'm a long-term friend from way back in her life. We both chuckle about how, with no friends in common and nothing about our lives that coincide except the Spurs, we share so much and get so much happiness from our friendship.
Soon, we're going to introduce her husband to david and see if they get on as well as we do.