Its been a nice few weeks of keeping myself occupied… to say the least… A week in Malaga with work, followed by a few days in Budapest for no real reason than because I felt like it and then down to Greece to see John and then a night in Venice – as it was an easy way to get to Birmingham! So here I am sitting on the fairly empty Jet2 plane heading to Birmingham, to pick up a hire car and head to my friend Julia’s funeral. As I sit here though I cant stop crying… and I don’t know why… I am going to try and work out why… OK I am upset that I am going to be going to a funeral of someone who I loved to bits who looked after me lots over my time in Birmingham. Julia owned Juju’s café a short walk from my apartment. When I first moved there I used to fly all over the place with work so used to text her my dinner order so she would have it prepared by the time I got from Birmingham airport. This started as a business relationship as I was just a customer, but we became friends over the years. He daughter Bea is great friend of mine and all the staff I know by name – so not your average customer relationship. We came to an agreement that I would install brand new WiFi, phone and internet in exchange for free food on account – this was mainly driven by me as I used to take my laptop down there at the weekend and write this blog and do some evil corp work. I went to many of their private parties, and Julia would always be looking out for me and trying to find me a nice man. Between Julia, Bea and Lyn we would chew the fat and talk about all the locals as we loved a good gossip. When I broke my ankle and couldn’t walk Julia and Bea came to my rescue… knowing my cooking skills are about as good as my dating skills they made me a cooked meal every night when they were open and brought it round. When friends used to visit I would take them to visit the café and meet Julia and Bea, and when I met Mark I took him to meet them as Julia insisted she has to vet my boyfriends. The first time Julia met Mark was at the Christmas party – where I took him down and we spent the evening singing our hearts out at bad Karaoke (back in the days when I had a karaoke machine on my laptop!). Over the years me and Mark would go there often for breakfast, and rarely pay. Julia and Bea were good friends and we used to look out for each other and spend many hours just hanging out and talking politics, people and shit basically. Julia was a pillar of the community and hosted the CQRA meetings and tried her best to keep the peace in a diverse set of opinions! The news of Julia’s passing shocked me and was revealed on the security whatsapp group.. as I had moved to IoM I had not been and seen her as often as I probably should have, but in my defence I was still trying to rebuild myself post Mark (and still am!). I was shocked but didn’t get upset, was just stunned and my brain wanted to know what the hell happened – the engineer version of Dale kicked in to try and make some sense of it. Out of respect I let Mark know and sent him the news and details of the funeral. I am not sure if he will attend the funeral, I would hope he would as Julia and Bea were always good to us and looked after us – and whilst its still difficult dealing with Mark I would hope he his moral compass would prevail and he pays his respects to one of our good friends. Things like this should come first no matter what the animosity is between us. Rich is meeting me later tonight – I would have liked him to come to the funeral but he doesn’t know Julia or Bea and it would be difficult if Mark does show up… but I would have liked Julia to meet him and this would have kind of being the last time he could and would be a nod to her vetting him. Unfortunately, he’s working and can’t make it, but I am sure she would approve! Today is going to be tough… I also got upset earlier in the week watching the Henry Nowak video… and it prompted me to write to the home secretary (who was also my local MP so does know me!). Seems my emotions are just all over the bloody place… I will welcome and nice hug tonight from Rich and just to spend some time with him xxx