Picking Up The Pieces

My Dear Princess & Dear Fellows,

Today we met up with JJ, one of Cazza's oldest friends and definitely one of her best. 

"We met at Language Camp," Cazza told me. "What a pair of nerds."

They were 15 years old. JJ was learning French and Cazza was learning Japanese. Surrounded by other Lingua-Nerds, the pair discovered they were like separated twins and spent their time conjugating NOTHING but instead "learning how to smoke".

JJ was a farm girl from up north, but the two of them became pen pals. "This was in the day when people wrote letters," explained JJ. During the next few years, JJ travelled around South America (her mother's family is Columbian) but the pair kept in touch the whole time.

It was a few years later when Cazza went to Uni, that she strolled into her International Politics class and found JJ sitting waiting for her. Not only that, but Cazza was living in a student flat with JJ's then boyfriend, Mark.

I should tell you about this flat. Apparently Shetland Dad dropped Cazza off and checked out her new flatmates nervously. It was a bunch of rugby boys. "Do you want me to stay?" he asked. 

"No, I think I'll be all right," said Cazza. 

She dumped her stuff in her room and checked out the living room. The three boys were all lined up in Lay-Z-Boys in front of the telly. There was an entire empty couch for Cazza. She sat down and immediately the whole thing flipped up and deposited her on her arse on the floor.

The boys were wetting themselves laughing. The couch had been cunningly booby-trapped with two legs removed. 

"Know this," said Cazza, once she was back on her feet. "That's the first and last time that happens. And from now on, you won't know when and you won't know how, but I'm coming for you."

And so it began. The pranks. 

On one occasion the rugby boys took all of Mark's bedroom furniture and arranged it - precisely as it was - on JJ's front lawn. On another occasion a dictaphone was placed under Jason's bed and replayed later, to much hilarity. Apparently he liked to ask his girlfriends, "Who's the king??" at the peak of excitement. 

As you might imagine, he got the nickname "Your Majesty" shortly thereafter.

Jockstraps got left everywhere. On Cazza's bed, in her text books, in the fridge. Annoyed by her habit of sleeping in, the boys would try to wake her by mowing the lawn outside her window and vacuuming outside her bedroom door at the same time. But she got her revenge on Jason when he was left alone in the flat for an entire weekend.

"No shagging outside your bedroom," he was told. 

"Of course," he replied.

When Cazza and the other flatmates returned, they did not take his word for it. They got hold of actual police fingerprint powder and dusted the flat. 

"Arse-prints!" accused Cazza. "And ON THE KITCHEN TOP TOO!"

Busted.

This was the world JJ and Cazza found themselves in. Fortunately JJ's mum would come by to visit often. "Ooh! You poor girl! Surrounded by these SMELLY boys!" she would fuss. She'd bring along pre-cooked meals and stack them in Cazza's fridge. JJ's mum was a very glamorous, very eccentric lady. She refused to reveal her age - ever - and claimed she would never age because she rubbed her skin with baby oil every day.

However, things don't last. JJ broke up with Mark and headed to Europe. In fact, it was JJ who encouraged Cazza to follow her about a year later.
But while Cazza headed north to Scotland, JJ had adventures of her own, driving a Kon-Tiki bus around Europe and living a hard-drinking, high-living, wild life.

"I got arrested a few times," she told us. "For speeding, for substance abuse and several times for 'unknown'."

Unknown?

"Well... being Columbian without due care and attention," she admitted. "Those European cops. They don't need an actual reason." 

Yeesh. That whole Columbian thing. People just make assumptions. Back in Scotland, Cazza told Mom & Pop all about JJ. Pop was a tough American dude, an ex-dealer and fascinated by the cartels. "Columbian?" he asked. "Is she in one of The Seven Families?"

"Oh for Christ's sake," replied Cazza. "Not EVERYONE in Columbia is connected, you know."

But even without The Columbian Connection, JJ seemed to have a knack for getting into trouble. "Oh and then there was the time that Interpol was after me," she told us.

Don't be alarmed. It turns out that her identity was stolen while she was in Russia, and some OTHER JJ had been up to no good. When I met her in 2001, she was full of stories like that. She's been everywhere and done everything. She is the only person I know who has no-shit ridden on an actual ostrich. She also indulged in "dark tourism" in North Korea.

"It was curiousity. I just wanted to tick the box on my checklist," she said. "But it was freaky. I've never felt so paranoid. You'd lift the vase on the table in your restaurant and see a bug. And because they are so crap at wiring in the bugs, I'd go into my hotel room, flick on the lights and the radio would switch on."

"We were taken on a tour of a school," she went on. "And they were all, 'Yes, this is a very advanced school, much better than the ones in the West' and they would show me a computer. And it was CARDBOARD. It was a display model. Like something you'd see in Harvey Norman. And I'd know it and they'd know it but we'd both have to smile and agree it was amazing."

She met an Aussie bloke in Spain and, to everyone's amazement, settled down. It sounds like she still lives a pretty wild life though. She was only in Wellington this weekend because she and her mates occasionally play at "Drunken Holiday Planning" and had settled on Wellington at about 3am after several bottles of wine. (Her mates were out and about doing other things while we were catching up).

However, she has a respectable job teaching history, ancient history, law and politics at an all-girls school. Her students just love her, but they are convinced she is a spy because of her wild background. And her trip to North Korea. They have come up with a whole narrative, she told us, and have even made a mini-film, with a commentary on "What do we REALLY know about JJ?" And then there's her head superimposed on photos with Obama and at the Royal Wedding.

The reason some of them love her is because they include a proportion of refugees from African countries. Young girls escaping war, they have some horrific stories and she always tries to listen and tries to help. She even takes care of the other teachers. "Some of these teachers, they're in their twenties," she told us. "They come to me in tears, telling me the girls need counselling and I tell them, 'So do you'. I'm nearly in my 50's. I've been arrested all over Europe. I'm way more weathered than they are."

By this time a lot of wine had been drunk. A lot. Cazza and JJ had been chatting for hours, reminiscing. "How IS your mum these days?" asked Cazza. 

"She's fine," replied JJ. "I still have no idea how old she is. And she actually looks younger than me. Bloody baby oil."

"I love you," said Cazza. Slurring a little bit, but still genuine. "Seeing you again like this, it's like a missing piece of the jigsaw has been put back."

I could see that. They might not have seen each other for 17 years, but they picked up right where they left off. The same jokes, the same laughter. It was lovely. Just like it is with me and you.

But the pair of them were looking increasingly the worse for wear and JJ was due to go to WOW later that evening. "Oh dear, good luck with that," said Cazza in sympathy.

So there were hugs and promises to meet up again in Wellington and/or Sydney soon. "Oh, and you know what?" added JJ. "My mother's family IS one of The Seven Families."

She left us with a mysterious Cheshire Cat smile. I can't see it being another 17 years before we see it again.

S.