The people who are

I've found that life is significantly better when you surround yourself with good people. This might seem like an obvious thing but it's taken me a while to come round to it.

 

Last year by all rights should have been horrendous. I lost my grandma to the absolute shitpit that is cancer, and in the last few weeks of her illness I felt like I was dying, because how could I possibly stand it? When she got to the final stretch, at first I couldn't even look, because it seemed perverse to be able to count someone's ribs from across the room, to be able to see their heart beating through their chest, to hand them a sippy cup of luke warm, extremely weak tea that weighed nothing and see their arm drop to the mattress like it was a dead weight. In the last week, I stayed in her house, by her side, talked away to her even though she couldn't hear me anymore. I never knew what to say to my grandma, and I always thought that out of all her granddaughters, surely the one with multiple tattoos, facial piercings and neon pink hair was the biggest disappointment, and maybe I was, but she loved me. So I prattled on, I read and re-read the death-and-dying leaflets a nurse had left me and when the time came, I knew exactly what was coming next. I watched her breathing turn into a spasm, I held her wrist and felt her heart stop. I took her pulse whilst my family watched and, bizarrely, panicked when I couldn't find it.

 

By rights the last year should have been the worst of my life, though I'm pretty sure I say that every year. But it's easy to hold on to the shit in life and ignore everything else.

 

Actually, last year was the best. Last year was fantastic. I've never been so consistently happy, and I think it has a lot to do with who I've surrounded myself with.

 

I've spent the last year jumping between being on tour with a band and studying for a new degree. Starting at a new university has been fantastic, I had no idea how much I'd love it, how different it is from my last degree, and that I'd make such goddamn excellent friends. Getting to do a degree with such a creative angle has given me so much to experiment with, and I love it.

 

I can't adequately describe touring. I've grown up with the band, their music is the music I listen to when I'm homesick, and being with them feels like home. Clichéd as it sounds we are a family (actually one member is my family), there's nothing I could do that any one of them would judge me for. Even without the element of going all over the country and out into Europe seeing new places and playing shows, the times spent in the tour van listening to everyone's favourite songs and just talking is the best feeling in the world.

 

 

(My guys and my ladies. Photo by Howard Rankin)

 

The shows are hard. I load and unload everyone's equipment from the van, I set it up, I go into a new venue every night and learn the lighting rig in time to produce a lightshow every night and come home bruised and achy, and it's the most rewarding job in the world. Not only do I get so see the band pour their whole heart into their performance every night, I get to be part of it too. And we get the occasional day off in Amsterdam too, which is always, always an event.

 

I was low-key terrified that there wouldn't be a tour this year, that it would be an album-writing year, but last week we started up again, and after six weeks off it was such a relief to get back on the road again. There's nowhere else I'd rather be than everywhere with the best people.