It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Like the great literary giant that is Charles Dickens this tale (or blog to use modern venacular) will enivitably be a tale of two cities. Some stories of great joy. Some of great sorrow. As a friend of mine once said “life is a buffett, lets dig in!”. To ease everyone in, I will start with a tale of great joy.
As I alluded to in my previous blog, I was alway someone who liked to live beyond my means. I like to lead a beverly hills lifestyle on a downtown budget (if the copious American refrences are too much, this blog probably is too, I grew up watching far too much ABC!).
Where did it all begin, and how does this relate do the muse of this blog… my mother….
The Muses were the inspitational Greek Goddesses who apparently inspired all sorts of things; poetry, language and maybe according to some… the whole versace line back when we were all obsesed with black and gold!
My muse was an altogether less grandiose figure, however no less influential.
I need to take you back to the summer of 2003…… Picure that summer… Sheryl Crow was topping the charts, Von Dutch was an actual thing and Ra Ra skirts had swepped the nation once more, plucked from fashion obscurity. I was a young lad about to embark on his university adventure. Always a mummys boy about to taste his first taste of independence. That summer felt exciting, nervewracking (spell check) and also a little emotional. After all the small town boy was about to become a big university boy! (big fish small pond thing)
Being my mothers youngest baby boy I knew this was going to be a hard time for her , as she always seen me as the “baby”. I would be wrong to say I never took advantage of what this accolade entitled me to, who wouldnt? I always got my own way, I always got the best toys, I mean wouldnt you? Sure the drawbacks were the questions of my masculinity (also more of that later), however lets be honest… that was always going to be a given!
So the big day came, she dropped me off at the “halls” which looked like something Michael Myers would take one look at and probably turn around screaming! I could sense the nervous energy in the car… I could see the tears as she welled up kissing me goodbye, trying not to pass remark as she inhaled the marijuana stenched “halls”. It was a brief goodbye, It was poignant, but brief… then she was gone…. I was free….I could do anything I wanted, well so I thought!
Fastforward 3 months….. (dont worry we will return to this back later)
I discovered my first taste of fashion…. well …. at the time I thought it was fashion. Isn’t it funny how everyone back then believed that all that was important was who everyone was wearing (unless you were beyond your years and far more cool than me, I applaud you). Now we are more worried about how good our instagram food photos look… by the way my sepia toned casseroles are to die for! okay… back to the story.
Being a newly discovered adult… I had metamorphised out of my cocoon from this little gay boy from Ballymena to a fully realised Diva overnight… and I loved it!!! With the help from a Pink Trilby hat and a bottle of fake tan… I knew then and there…. I had made it! I remember walking into a store and seeing my first designer pair of jeans…. sure £150.00 seemed a lot of money….. but I knew…. I needed them. No thats inccorrect
THEY NEEDED ME!
The jeans soon turned into a tshirt that I just had to have… on a weekly basis… that then turned into the ugly Von Dutch hat at £60.00 that I only wore once… It all became the essential things I needed to exist… to feel validated. To continue feeling like the diva I thought I was and who I thought I needed to be. Then those simple words echoed in my ear.
“Now Michael you need to set yourself a Budget…. Plan your finances every week, set a budget”
back then I had more money than sense, I had no debt yet I seemed to have unlimited disposable income. Realistically the return on the investment on a university course book was never going to compete with a brand new pair of Diesel jeans. My future was obviously less important than the fix I received from handing over cash (we were so basic back then) to the vendor in exchange for 10 minutes of joy.
“Now Michael you need to set yourself a Budget…. Plan your finances every week, set a budget”
Those words were repeated over the years and they turned into a running joke between us two…. “stop nagging”, to which she would always reply “if i wasnt here to nag, you would miss it!”
She was right
A Grievers Guide to the Galaxy 