Darby and Joan: March 2012

Darby and Joan are the quintessential middle-aged British couple, characterised by knitwear, hours of scrabble, and a penchant for staying in on Saturday nights. Darby and Joan are, in fact, Calum and me. I wrote my first letter almost a year ago. I was going to do it more often, but I was too busy taking the piss out his Lana Del Rey cover photo on Facebook.

Dear Darby,

'Is it weird that this is the stuff we
talk about?' you said to me over Skype.

'What, punctuation and sentence
structure and the rules of the possessive apostrophe?' I said.

'Yeah,' you replied. 'Should we be
talking about willies and coke binges?'

We both reflected on the question for a
moment.

'Can I just ask you something about
what you wrote on page 13?' I finally said, and we laughed, because
for us, punctuation and sentence structure and rules of the
possessive apostrophe is as exciting as any sex story.

Well. Nearly.

I had your package in front of me-
pages from my manuscript you'd read and edited for me. After I had
read your notes, I cried. It wasn't sad tears because you were mean.
It wasn't happy tears because you loved it. Although, yes. Both of
those things apply, you truthful bastard. I just missed you.

'I've never had a friend like him,' I
told the girls at work as they handed over the package you'd sent to
my work address. On the front you'd cellotaped two pictures of Jesus-
one Easter image of him holding a lamb, and another of him on the
cross with the image of a lion in the sky. On the note inside you'd
written, I hope Jesus and Mufassa get this to you safely...

'He owns a part of
my heart that no man had ever owned before.' I continued. 'When
somebody understands your passion like he understands mine, it's
all-consuming.'

'Well,' said one of
the receptionists. 'He is your best friend, isn't he?'

'I know,' I
replied. 'But I've never had a friend like this before.'

The receptionist
smiled. 'That's why you can call him the best one,' she said.

Didn't you know
that I worked with Buddha?

This time last year
was the most difficult and the best time of our creative lives. We
sat side-by-side for twelve hours at a time, writing and drinking
Sainsbury's flavoured water, sweating and
bleeding and sobbing over work we needed to produce in order to
graduate top of our respective classes. And now the wheels are in
motion for you to further your study in America and me in London, and
it makes my heart sing with proud joy that we are both getting better
and more determined with what we do every single day. GRAMMAR NAZIS
WILL RULE THE WORLD.

And then I get the
major sads because woah. We can't plan to be in the same city again
until 2014, and who plans that far ahead? PEOPLE WITH LISTS. That's
who.

You just sent me a
text message- an international message to my Italian cell, which you
hate doing because it costs you so much more money and somehow you
live off five quid a week- to tell me you had just found my
final-year thesis in the university library. It is kept there because
it is so good, an example to other students. I don't care how much
you roll your eyes when I say that. It's an example to other students
of how good something can be when your best friend helps you be all
that you can be, I think.

And yes. You may
throw up now.

WHY ARE YOU READING
MY DISSERTATION? I wrote back to you. PUT. THE. RED. PEN. DOWN. IT'S
OVER. And you replied, I THOUGHT I'D GO AND SEE THE ONLY PART OF YOUR
SOUL CURRENTLY STILL IN THE COUNTRY. YOUR DISSERTATION IS LIKE A
HORCRUX. IF THIS WERE HARRY POTTER I'D BE STABBING IT WITH A BIG
SWORD RIGHT ABOUT NOW. That made me think you didn't understand Harry
Potter and the horcrux situation very well, but it was nice to hear
anyway.

Oh. Wait. Unless
you understand Harry Potter really well indeed, and actually you want
me dead. Wow. That changes things.

I emailed you to
say that as I read your notes on my manuscript I made this noise I
have come to adapt. I think it might be an Italian noise despite the
fact that my Italian friend tries to tell me otherwise. It goes sort
of like, 'Uh! UH!' when I agree with something. You replied to me by
saying, 'I KNOW THE NOISE. I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU.'

And then I had lie
down in a darkened room with an even bigger case of the sads,
before creating a board on Pinterest called 'Potential Writers Studio' because that is all I can focus on: in 2014 we will live in
the city and share a writing space and drink all the Sainsbury's
flavoured water we like.

Side-note: when I
told Mama that she cried. It was awkward.

Every day we will
talk and talk and talk about each other's work, and analyse
it and debate it and make notes on it like, 'Don't be shit!' and 'You
can do better' and 'LAURA! DELETE THIS. QUITE FRANKLY IT IS
OFFENSIVE.' I work that out to be in about 700 days. But as you know,
maths has never been my strongest point. Neither has writing a
manuscript with enough punctuation. I see that now. I won't be shit
any more.

Please be with me.

Joan x