With thanks to lyndlj for arranging this.
So, I always had a feeling that 23 was my lucky number and was therefore delighted that no-one had chosen it before I snuck in. Now, however, I know it to be my lucky number, because it awarded me the wonderful, the amazing, the adjectives-need-to-be-reinvented-to-describe-her-properly RunDontWalk as my Secret Santa post.
What should I write about? I feel that I have a rather unfair advantage, having had the pleasure of making her acquaintance just a few short weeks ago. We were barely acquainted as blog buddies when I displayed a small amount of tentative interest in coming to Liverpool for the blog meet. To me, at that point in my life having only met people with the normal amounts of openness, friendliness, sociability and genuineness, her encouragement was a lot more enthusiastic than I could have ever imagined. So I decided to covince other people to pay for me to go to Liverpool.
It seems rather predictable to go on about the efforts that she made to get to the UK to meet everyone. I think it is more important to focus on her motivations for making those efforts, as they epitomise the very reasons that all of us are here.
We are here because we feel that the people we meet here and share our highs and lows with are capable of, in some way, filling the various voids that we all have in our lives. That someone could believe in us as fully as RunDontWalk does justifies our presence here, shows us that we do make a difference to people, that what we are doing is truly worthwhile.
There is another way in which she is a very admirable women. She can drink. A person who can appreciate Guinness is, to me, a pretty good person. If that person can manage to stay up all night long after a week of thunderous boozing and almost accidentally going to Scotland (the horror!), that makes that person a great person. If, however, that person can let out a sly little fart at 6 a.m., look unblinkingly over at the nearest person and accuse them of the fart, then that person is truly a wonderful person.
Kelly, you are fantastic. And I know I am speaking for everyone on BCUK when I say that.
