Darby & Joan: February 2013

















Darby & 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, @calummcswiggan and me. Read the Darby and Joan back catalogue here.

Dear
Darby,





As I
write this I’m supping an overpriced Chianti at the airport and waiting for my gate
number to come up on the departure board. I’m flying out to Rome for the
weekend. And I mean, woah, it’s my
first trip back since I lived there so YUP. ALL THE EMOTIONS. But also? All the
emotions because you’re a fuckhead and sitting here I’m just getting more and
more frustrated at what a nob you are, when I should planning how to best eat
all the rice balls without losing room for all the blue cheese gnocchi.





You’re
really ruining my appetite.





Just
kidding. Nothing ruins my appetite.





But
you’re still a shit.






As I type
and drink (and eat a Cadbury’s Cream Egg because HI EASTER TREATS IN FEBRUARY!)
waiting to leave the country, you are flying into the country.





Yup.
You’ve said for ages that you’d be hitting up London at some point this month,
because you’ve got grown-up people’s business to attend to (I don’t know what
that must be like, obvs). When you said that, it was friendship music to my can we watch clips of Cheryl on the X-Factor
please ears.





I was
excited that you’d be flying in from Spain and we could do hanging out, because
literally not a day goes by where I don’t think, yeah, now I’m falling in love with London I kinda need Calum to do that
too i.e. I’m ready for those imaginary children now. None of this is new
news. I know.





Anyway,
I did last-minute ticket booking to Rome after I saw photographs of all my
friends from times past doing fun things THAT I WASN’T PART OF, and right after
you emailed to say FIRST WEEKEND OF FEB! IMMA COMING! I was all like… Urm, yeah
but… no.





But
it is what it is. We both agreed that the universe has one funny sense of
humour. That bitch.





Your
flight should have landed by now, which means we are officially inhaling the
exact same smoggy London air, and I’m just so frustrated that it worked out
this way. How could we have made such an error in communication? How
did we get to a place where we allowed this to happen? WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE
HATE US?





I’m
not sure how this is going to work. I mean, yeah, fine, we email pretty much
all day everyday, and so that means you know what I eat for lunch and get
real-time updates about whether that boy text me back or not, and I know exactly how many blisters you got from
your run this morning and together we invent more Fake French than two people
will ever need (J’love it).





All of
this is super.





But
what is definitely not super is that you will be gallivanting around my home city
this weekend, and I’ll be gallivanting around my old home city. And when will we ever happily co-exist in the same place?
It makes me wonder if it will all ever happen. Will we ever drink flirtinis together
in New York? Make a documentary across Africa? Go back to the French bistro in
Derby?





Because
all of those things would involve being TOGETHER.





You told
me that we’re the same person this month. That was nice. Then you were all, if only I were a 36 year old straight man
and you were a nineteen year old gay boy, we could just cut out all the
bullshit and have sex.





And
then you were like, OHMYGOD WHAT IS GOING
TO HAPPEN WHEN OUR FUTURE BOYFRIENDS MEET? LIKE, WHAT ARE A MIDDLE AGED MAN AND
A TEENAGE BOY GOING TO TALK ABOUT? To which I pondered, “Oh hi, I was thirty years old when you were
conceived,” and you were like, “But
at least your boyfriend can babysit mine when we go out dancing,” except
since we’re never in the same city at the same time this babysitting will have
to happen over Skype and so now I come to think of it so will the dancing.





You
see how confusing this is for me?





OUR
LIVES WILL APPARENTLY HAVE TO BE A SERIES OF VIRTUAL DANCE PARTIES WITH
IMAGINARY LOVERS WHO EXIST IN DIFFERENT GENERATIONS AND WILL BE REALLY AWKWARD
TOGETHER AT SATURDAY NIGHT BOLLOCKS AND PRETEND DINNER PARTIES THAT ARE REALLY
JUST PIZZA PARTIES FROM DOMINO'S.





Anyway,
I have to go now because they are calling my flight to board. And I’ve finished
this glass of wine, and think I might be a bit drunk. If I call you later and
slur down the phone it’s really not my fault. It’s the wine and the missing you
and the idea of us having regular sex in our future. Except… not with each
other. That came out wrong. I meant... Oh. It doesn’t matter. You understand. Even from as far away as London to my Rome.





You
always do.





J’should
go now.





Forever
yours sugarplum,





(Drunk) Joan
x


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