So far away - still, remembering Vicky J

Last week I found out a friend of mine from Sixth Form had been killed whilst crossing a London road at a pedestrian crossing. She was hit by a car. Shortly after being admitted to hospital she was pronounced dead. Today her friends and family are gathering in her home of Stradbroke, Sufolk to remember what a bright, bubbly and incredibly talented young woman she was. The following is my contribute to her Celebration of Life.



You're not gone.
You're only hiding.
You must be.
You're my friend I'm having trouble finding.

You're still that bubbly thing.
I remember your awsome make-up tips.
You've still got great plans for the world.
How else can I explain this?

It must be that you're hiding.
Remember we sat together at Leavers Dinner?
I think there were 9 other tables.
Ours was the one reserved for winners.

I should ring you up today.
No, you're not answering.
It still feels like you're hiding.
To come to terms with that; I have to, is what I'm figuring.

And I don't know why the world still spins.
Because If I feel like crying.
I know you'd say something witty -
to cheer me up. See you're only hiding.

I'm grateful that I met you.
I'm not grateful that you're gone.
If you weren't hiding - think what the world would have seen,
How you could have helped, the things you could have done.

But I can't sit and wonder now.
If I do, reality will start sliding.
I'll chuckle at your cheeky ways.
Because it's as if as though you're hiding.

Of course you're in a hidden place.
I'm carrying pieces of you with me.
You're still a friend, sister, daughter.
I knew you as Ve.


Stuck in Madrid when all I want to be is somewhere else. For all those that loved her, to try and understand this is life and what has happened.

When it snows, it flurrys.

Well after the fun and games of the Christmas and New Year season, the January blues have well and truly kicked in. Everyone's back to work, well everyone except me who came back to Madrid to find my teaching hours have been cut by 80%. Oh the joys of living in an unchecked, dog eat dog industry such as English as a Foreign Language. Its rubbish. Im scraping toegether what I can find to pay the rent and cutting all social activities such as my beloved Curry nights with the girls. Oh and guess what - that financial storm that America made is just starting to blow over to Spain and the country's starting to take a battering. So job availability could go one of two ways; whilst the buisness world realises now more than ever that having Enlgish under their belt will help secure their jobs, if a company needs to make set backs - contracts with academies are going to be the first things that go.

So I find myself trauling through the back pages of 'In Madrid' magazine looking for academies to send my C.V. to with the same amount of hope and vague possiblity I clung to whilst looking for flats last September/July and May. It's all getting a tad boring now and having spent most of my time off back in London, living it up with my horrifically settled friends I can't help but wonder maybe I should try my luck there. Maybe this whole 'round the world without a plane challenge' thing just isn't worth it. I have spent the best part of a year trying to find details of freight liners that would take me from Cape Town to Australia after my African Overland experience. I thought I was a step away from getting it nailed when I made contact with a specialist agent called 'Strand' in London. Only they replied telling me Cape Town have stopped taking passengers in that direction. Again with the sarcastic oh joy, back to square one.

Friends though as supportive as they are, keep telling me how amazing it is doing what I am doing. Which I try not to fully believe because if I do I just get completely overwhelmed by the enormity of my task. The best thing to do I suppose is find more ways of getting through the immidiate problems that I face and hope the other logistical ones eek out in time.

Ps, word from a friend of a friend in London who works for a publicity team that has sometimes delt with Ewan McGreggor says that actually he puts on that whole family man image (the one I talked about in my last blogg) for the cameras. Apparently he took a stylist with him on 'Long Way Down' for the photo shoots and socially is a complete arse who sleeps with every female co-star he has. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this tit-bit of information but I think I prefer to believe his nice 'actor turned real' image. And lets face it - I can. Hell, I don't know the guy.