was vaguely like her, the resemblance was more that of an older, wiser sibling. What I looked like to her I had no idea but there was considerably more of me now than there had been back then. As for the way I was dressed (army jacket, jeans, trainers) I guessed I looked grown up but not exactly like a grown-up .
As we walked along the street towards Leeds’s Corn Exchange for a coffee I commented on how the city had changed. As a student in Manchester I used to come here all the time for gigs or to see friends at the university and knew it quite well but the huge swathes of glass and steel were unfamiliar. Always keen to adopt a clumsy metaphor, I wondered whether Sam might see me in the same way.
We wandered around various shops selling everything from Goth clubwear to comics before heading down to the café on the lower ground floor. As we waited for our drinks Sam filled in the gaps of how she had left Birmingham to go back to Yorkshire and how she ended up in IT support. She told me all about her house in a little village to the west of Leeds, how she’d given up smoking and got into Pilates. She told me she’d been seeing a guy for a while but wasn’t sure where it was going and that she might like to have kids one day if both the guy and the timing were right. Midway through an anecdote about a recent gig she paused as though she’d remembered something important, picked up her bag from the floor, and pulled out a large grey folder.
‘Have a look at this.’
I opened the folder and a smile spread across my face. Inside were the letters that I’d sent to her when I’d first moved to London the summer after we became friends. The letters were filled with nonsense that at the time I thought was funny: drawings of stick men, detailed descriptions of things I’d eaten for breakfast and information leaflets for local swimming baths. At the bottom was something that really took me back: a homemade birthday card (from photocopied pictures from the Jamie Hewlett comic, Tank Girl ) that I’d sent to Sam on her twentieth birthday.
Sam grinned. ‘That is still one of the nicest cards I’ve ever had.’
‘Cheers,’ I said examining my handcrafted effort. ‘It took me forever to make but I remember really enjoying it. I miss doing stuff like that – making cards and mix-tapes and writing friends long letters – I miss doing things for no other reason than because they’re fun.’
There was a bit of a silence and I wondered whether Sam had picked up on what I was trying to say: that as well as missing making stupid birthday cards I missed having a mate as good as her, but then the waitress arrived and we got distracted.
‘I’m definitely going to come and see you again, you know.’
‘Why? Are you thinking of leaving already?’
‘No,’ I laughed, ‘it’s just . . . it’s just . . . I dunno.’
‘It’s all right, I know what you mean. I was thinking the same thing: it seems pointless making so many good mates when you’re younger just to let them all go without putting up a fight.’
‘Exactly,’ I replied. ‘What I’m trying to say is let’s not leave it another fourteen years before we do this again.’
On the 18.10 back to Birmingham New Street, squeezed in next to a plump business man with a bright red face and opposite a pair of students sharing iPod headphones, I reflected not only on the day but on the whole of this last month. From that momentous change of heart on New Year’s Eve I’d ticked off dozens of items from the To-Do List and moreover stuck to the plan for a whole month. Maybe this To-Do List wasn’t going to end up like every other here-today-gone-tomorrow whim of mine. Maybe this really was different.
Excerpt from Mike’s To-Do-List Diary (Part 2)
Thursday 1 February
1.21 p.m. I am searching for my old debit
As we walked along the street towards Leeds’s Corn Exchange for a coffee I commented on how the city had changed. As a student in Manchester I used to come here all the time for gigs or to see friends at the university and knew it quite well but the huge swathes of glass and steel were unfamiliar. Always keen to adopt a clumsy metaphor, I wondered whether Sam might see me in the same way.
We wandered around various shops selling everything from Goth clubwear to comics before heading down to the café on the lower ground floor. As we waited for our drinks Sam filled in the gaps of how she had left Birmingham to go back to Yorkshire and how she ended up in IT support. She told me all about her house in a little village to the west of Leeds, how she’d given up smoking and got into Pilates. She told me she’d been seeing a guy for a while but wasn’t sure where it was going and that she might like to have kids one day if both the guy and the timing were right. Midway through an anecdote about a recent gig she paused as though she’d remembered something important, picked up her bag from the floor, and pulled out a large grey folder.
‘Have a look at this.’
I opened the folder and a smile spread across my face. Inside were the letters that I’d sent to her when I’d first moved to London the summer after we became friends. The letters were filled with nonsense that at the time I thought was funny: drawings of stick men, detailed descriptions of things I’d eaten for breakfast and information leaflets for local swimming baths. At the bottom was something that really took me back: a homemade birthday card (from photocopied pictures from the Jamie Hewlett comic, Tank Girl ) that I’d sent to Sam on her twentieth birthday.
Sam grinned. ‘That is still one of the nicest cards I’ve ever had.’
‘Cheers,’ I said examining my handcrafted effort. ‘It took me forever to make but I remember really enjoying it. I miss doing stuff like that – making cards and mix-tapes and writing friends long letters – I miss doing things for no other reason than because they’re fun.’
There was a bit of a silence and I wondered whether Sam had picked up on what I was trying to say: that as well as missing making stupid birthday cards I missed having a mate as good as her, but then the waitress arrived and we got distracted.
‘I’m definitely going to come and see you again, you know.’
‘Why? Are you thinking of leaving already?’
‘No,’ I laughed, ‘it’s just . . . it’s just . . . I dunno.’
‘It’s all right, I know what you mean. I was thinking the same thing: it seems pointless making so many good mates when you’re younger just to let them all go without putting up a fight.’
‘Exactly,’ I replied. ‘What I’m trying to say is let’s not leave it another fourteen years before we do this again.’
On the 18.10 back to Birmingham New Street, squeezed in next to a plump business man with a bright red face and opposite a pair of students sharing iPod headphones, I reflected not only on the day but on the whole of this last month. From that momentous change of heart on New Year’s Eve I’d ticked off dozens of items from the To-Do List and moreover stuck to the plan for a whole month. Maybe this To-Do List wasn’t going to end up like every other here-today-gone-tomorrow whim of mine. Maybe this really was different.
Excerpt from Mike’s To-Do-List Diary (Part 2)
Thursday 1 February
1.21 p.m. I am searching for my old debit
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