‘ask me why i think you’re wonderful’, i asked. and she did. ‘the above paragraph’, i replied.

“You come the evening on the 28th, i’m planning on asking one of my loving friends to take me to pick you up from the airport, then maybe just go straight out, more or less. Unless you’re tired. I mean we can stay in if you’d like to. The 29th we’ll do fun stuff - make my mum love you - hopefull get in a really cold, wet, stormy walk along the beach with scarves and hats and gloves and cold noses, then out that night. The 30th, we’ll get up and do something. I’m not sure what. Something that leaves us in portsmouth. Afternoon, 3ish?, or maybe evening time, we’ll get on the bus from portsmouth harbour and go up to london, pop into KFC or somewhere equally wonderful (you’re going to learn to hate me) on the way so that you can hand her a  bucket as a ‘nice to meet you’ present and she’ll love you forever (the girl’s like me, she likes to eat) and then we can sit and feast and talk, then sleep at the flat, the the morning of the 31st we’ll go vintage shop a little, topshop if there’s time (i beg you) and the tate because it’s great and i haven’t been since summer, and then that night all the rest of my friends (by this point kind of your friends, too) will arrive and we’ll go and party, i think trafalgar square for midnight so we can check some fireworks, then back to the flat or someone elses in london, i have a couple of friends who live there, for a party. Stay wherever, hopefully misli and steve’s. Then we’ll get the coach back the next day, unless we can scav a lift, we’ll eat fast food again because that and water is all you’re allowed to eat with a hangover on new years day, chill out at mine for a couple of hours, and then drop you to southampton for your flight in the evening.

And then you’ll come back to paris and shrivel up and hibernate, and recover in time for my birthday on the 9th. which i asked to have off…”