My First Limerick

There once was a girl born in Hackney
Near Bow Bells - a genuine cockney!
Every day she would look
In the ladybird book
Just to torment her lovely John Oakey!

Klose Enkounters of the KiKiKind

"K has a doctor's appointment so she'll be in a little later this morning. Once she's here she'll show you the ropes."

And so I sat my 20 year-old butt down and waited...That was both the bane and bliss of temping - not too much expected of you but often frustrating when you can't seem to find anything to pass the time because you're 'just a temp'.

Eventually K arrived. Smart, organised, younger than I'd thought she'd be. We danced the usual jig of getting to know each other whilst at the same time working through the basics – phone system, toilets, tea-making facilities, what the point of our office was...

It turned out she was also 20 (although she had a grown-up job and wasn't a student on summer holidays) but then she mentioned her husband and daughter! How could she have a husband (teehee!) Sounded far too grown-up! There was no chance we'd have anything in common then - apart from our age, we were lifetime's apart! I'd not long returned from a year abroad as part of my language degree (more of this another time) so was full of the joys of la liberté and she was settled down (and, yes, a proper grown-up - all I could keep thinking!)

I couldn't tell you now what it was that clicked but there we were no more than an hour in each other's company, working for a seemingly very strict council GM (who was no doubt working on something important in the adjacent office) and across the hall from a grump of an accounts clerk when something must have just clicked.

All I can liken it to is 'love at first sight' (without the sex).

We were in stitches - the type of genuine uncontrollable laughter that is both agonising and ecstatic all at once. I wonder, if we really thought long and hard about it, whether either of us could remember what lead us so quickly to falling for each other the way we did (still in an utterly asexual way, you understand).

Fast-forward 15 years and she's still my soulmate - always there, usually doing something juvenile that only I would find hilarious (we are truly hilarious).

How do we end up with people in our lives - in whichever capacity - who just seem to fit? Divine intervention? Fate? Serendipity?

Reckon if K and I pondered this over a few Raspberripolitans we could come up with the answers...might forget the question though.

An EPIC Party, summer 2008 (c) Sarah Grimwood 2013