Today is an unashamedly sentimental photo. It’s the birthday today of Claire, one of my oldest and closest friends.

We met at the end of 1981, at the Venue – a fabulous music venue in Victoria in London. We were standing next to one another in the front row at a Q-Tips gig. I had this camera in my hand (a Pentax MV with a Vivitar ‘flowerpot’ lens – 135mm f2.3) and I was frantically photographing away while trying to dance, look at Paul Young and remember to enjoy myself too. I was wearing this jacket too.

Claire was with a group of giggly girlies standing next to me and she was impressed with the size of my lens so gave me a hastily scribbled note asking me if I’d like to sell her any of the photos when I’d got them developed. I wrote to her saying I’d be happy to and she sent me a cheque for the prints. I posted them to her and the following morning (a Saturday) she phoned me and we spent two hours on the phone, discovering that we shared a taste in music, were both veggies and hosts of other more trivial stuff.

We’ve never looked back.

I have so much to thank her for. She introduced me to almost all of my close friends in a roundabout way – Shazbop was a friend of hers who also loved the Q-Tips and the three of us trailed all over the country watching them. Through Sharon, I met Colin and Paul about two years or so later, also at a gig but this time an Escape Club gig. I also met David because they shared a love of Beetles so, when I went to one of Claire’s birthday parties years ago alone because my ex-husband hadn’t wanted to join us, I was sat next to this incredibly attractive man with the most beautiful steely blue eyes it is possible to imagine. It took many casual meetings at parties and many years of pain before we became an item but the seeds were sown by Claire.

We used to go everywhere together. We would make all our own clothes (at one stage we both had home-made suits in white rubber……!!!), use a giant can of extrahold hairspray each a week to keep our dyed black crimped huge hairdos in place and polish our money before going out. We always had something to celebrate. We spent our time ligging with bands backstage at gigs all over the country. One day, while we were backstage at a Boomtown Rats gig, Bob Geldoff commented on her white rubber fringy jacket. Another time we were plucked out of the audience at a gig by the Q-Tips manager to go onstage and present a bouquet to the band at their farewell gig….all we were worried about was that our skirts were so short and the stage was so high and we were showing our ‘next weeks washing’ to the front three rows!!!

She picked me up when I was in a million tiny pieces when my marriage broke up. She sat opposite me in Yates Wine Bar in Reading through a huge pile of tissues as I told her of my misery and unhappiness. She rebuilt my confidence by helping me to find clothes that flattered me instead of hiding me away. She (along with my Mum and my sister) listened to me on the phone for an hour each night because I was so afraid to put the phone down and face being alone.

She egged me on to get in touch with David because he was lonely too and we’d had a mutual attraction for years. My confidence was so low I could see no way he’d ever want to spend time with me. Eventually I plucked up courage to talk to him at one of her parties.

The Q-Tips brought us together. This single is SYSLJFM – their first release and a cover of the Joe Tex classic. Tonight, as I take this shot, I’m listening to ‘Please Don’t Stay At Home’ one of their self-penned numbers – a great dance track that we both love and symbolic of the fact that Claire now has to stay at home more than I’d like because she swapped her life a few years ago, moved to Melton Mowbray and now runs a business where either her or her husband have to be on their premises all the time. They can’t go out together without closing the business and that isn’t feasible often. So, I see her rarely because I find it difficult to get up there to see her. We’ve not seen one another since before Christmas.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CLAIRE…….I will come and see you soon!

A year ago today....