This is me (left) and Graham (right) in February 2001. It seems like a lifetime ago, and in many ways it was. So much has changed since that day, it is, in every way, another life. Luckily, the fact that one upon a time, it was my life has made me the person I am today, and who I am today isn't a bad thing.



This is me and my friend Zoe, and it was taken in London at the Town And Country Club, on December 10th-16th 2000. I don't remember which night. We were going out at the time. Don't I look different? I shaved my head because I didn't like my hair, and I decided to burn it clean and start again (known by Americans as "A Vietnam"). Such periods where I change my appearance - well, relatively radically by getting a new wardrobe, or shaving my head or growing my hair - reflected massive life change.

At the time I did it, hardly anyone shaved their head. Overnight, tramps stopped asking me for change, and people in public seemed less agressive towards me. About two years later, everyone was doing it. So I gew my hair when my first wife and I split up. Too many memories when I look in the mirror, or walked down those stairs.

A place has a memory. When we split up, I couldn't wait to leave. Every time I walked through the front door, sat on that sofa, slept in that bed, it wasn't my bed, it was ours, and she had abandoned it. Every time I did anything there, I remembered, "this is where she was once". The only way to change it was to move. To change my clothes my hair, my face! as Broooooooooce sang in "Dancing In The Dark". It's difficult to start again, when every place you go is a place that remind you of the one who went away.

So long ago. Time may or may not be a healer, but the distance over time you gain shrinks anything as you get further away, until you can't even see it anymore.
- posted by Mark @ 10:04 pm