Manic Kitty

On Thursday we went up to Liverpool for a tribute gig at the Everyman for Chris our friend who died a few weeks ago. I'm not sure what I was expecting but I found it a lot harder to deal with than I expected. Ever since I found out about his death he's not been far from my thoughts which I've found quite hard to deal with in itself.

Chris was Porl's friend, they were at school together, they were in bands together, infact Porl was the one who first got Chris recording music and persuaded him to get a bass. Porl kept telling Chris he should be doing his own music, which is eventually what he did. When they left school they met new people and didn't see so much of each other. I probably only saw Chris a couple of times a year, usually we'd spend 2-3 days together doing things as a group, then not see each other again for another 6 months. We always did memorable things though, (like my first trip to Bugged Out, or setting off at 3am to walk to someones house 6 miles away, and many other things which a blog isn't the place to mention.)

The first time I met Chris he came up to my halls at uni, he made me laugh so much I ended up hiding under my duvet try to regain my composure so I could at least breathe!
Although Porl has told me he could have very dark periods, I can't think of a time that I met him when he was anything but happy, funny, and the centre of attention.
I think that's why I've found the idea of him committing suicide so hard to deal with.

At the tribute gig there were handout booklets of his Slak Fox cartoons, a donation got you CD's of some of the Monkey music. Also the walls were covered with posters from gigs, reviews up of the band, interviews from fanzines, and lots and lots of photos (especially those with John Peel.)
I was doing okay keeping myself together, but then at the end of the night I was sat next to one of the photo boards, deep breaths were keeping me calm until Porl commented on one of the pictures as being exactly how he remembered Chris, deeper breaths, they started playing a Monkey track and Porl fell apart, then I did.

We didn't get home until about 2am, but neither of us felt like sleep, so we sat up and watched a film together, a very rare occurrence for us, but our emotions were too charged to be able to sleep.

I woke up stupidly early yesterday considering my late night, but couldn't get back to sleep. I felt restless and in need of fresh air, I had a drive round and got a great charity shop find (which I'll do a separate post about). Then I went to a garden centre and bought some yellow Chrysanthemums for the garden. Whenever I picture Chris he's wearing a yellow t-shirt, lots of people at the funeral were wearing yellow, as well as all the flowers being yellow, so I'm pretty sure it was his favourite colour. Also the woman at the garden centre said yellow is for Friendship (I had to explain why I was crying while buying plants.)
I bought Chrysanthemums because the 2nd song Porl and Chris wrote together was called Chrysanthemum. The first was Christina. Apparently Chris hadn't realized the egocentricity of this until Porl suggested the next song should be "Chris is Great, Chris is Great, All Bow Down and Worship Chris."
But he was Great.
Yesterday would have been his 30th birthday.