IRL

It took me ages to get my lipstick right. I was nervous, I think. I don’t know how blotting my lips just one more time would help us to have things to talk about, but I did it again just in case anyway. What if I’m a disappointment to her? I wondered to myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have suggested this at all. Oh God. She’s going to hate me. Oh no. WHAT AM I DOING?

I was about to go and pick up Megan from the train station, which is interesting only because I’d never met Megan before. I’d never met her, and yet she was about to come and spend 48 hours at my house, as my guest. Eating my food (what if she hates my food?), hanging out in my garden (what if she hates my garden?) and generally like, doing all the stuff that friends do (what if she doesn’t want to be my friend?!).

I “met” her through work. Part of my job (which GUYS. I FINISHED YESTERDAY, NOW LEAVING ME UNEMPLOYED. LET’S COME BACK TO THAT PLS) was reaching out to beauty bloggers to see if there was an opportunity to collaborate with brands I managed. Megan has an insanely gorgeous fashion, lifestyle and beauty website, as well as a YouTube channel, and was as excited about getting involved with what I was doing as I was to be teaming up with her. And so, six months ago, began our professional relationship.

Honestly? The reason Megan was such a pleasure to work with was that her emails were just so damned friendly. She’d pepper her correspondence with little details about her life, her comings and goings, and so when she asked me about my weekend or my day, I found myself responding in kind: Have the most wonderful time at the Justin Timberlake concert. Gosh, that’s reminds me of when I was thirteen and *insert personal anecdote here* etc.

Before long we were emailing daily, discussing the minutiae of our days, our excitements and sometimes our problems, and then we started to follow each other on Twitter, so not only were we emailing directly, but we were also connecting on social media and getting “real time” updates on one another’s lives. Megan started reading this blog, so before I knew it my “professional contact” had seen my tits and read about my poop, and then we became like my nana: texting to say we’d emailed about that Tweet because OMFG THAT BLOG POST YOU WROTE.

It seemed smart to actually meet face-to-face, then.

I approached her, at the train station, recognising her from her Vlogs. “Megan…?” I said, tentatively, and she turned and smiled, opening her arms in greeting. There was hugging, and exclamations over outfits and hair and lipstick (PHEW!) and then that was that. We were friends.

We got on the tube and went for a coffee and walked to my house and sat in my garden, all the while…talking. It’s a funny sensation, knowing so much about another person, and them you, without having met, but the details meant it was so incredibly easy to simply be ourselves. She met my housemates and played Bananagrams and Charades and helped with the washing up and let my brother give her advice and drank tea. We stayed up late and slept in longer than we should and ate a big breakfast in the garden. We read the Sunday papers and discussed the news (style pages), and went to yoga, and meditated, and generally existed side-by-side for a weekend, like friends do.

It was proper well lovely.

In fact, it was so lovely that I insisted that she meet the actual love of my life, and so the easy-ness and the talking and the existing continued in St. James’ Park with Calum, where between them they had a bottle of rum and between me and myself a bottle of rosé was downed, and my new friend and my favourite friend took the piss out of each other as we lay on the grass and looked at the sky and laughed. Oh goodness, there was so much laughter.

Drunk on booze and being understood we climbed aboard a bus, inside jokes already established, roles already assigned, and hurtled towards St Pancras where we demanded pasta at Carluccio's and obnoxiously topped up the three cokes we ordered with the last of the rum, surreptitiously, under the table, arguing (probably too loudly) WHAT IS THE WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN IF THEY CATCH US I DON’T EVEN LIKE IT HERE THAT MUCH ANYWAY I’LL NEED MORE RUM THAN THAT THANKS.

When Megan and I needed to pee we went into the bathroom stall together – which everybody knows means that you’re now BFF’s forever amen - and as Calum and I put her on the train, waving her away, I felt happy and sad and sentimental and above all else, really, really lucky. Cuz hot damn - meeting that stranger off the Internet was so much FUN.

Want to say something about this post? Talk to me!

 Twitter. Facebook. Email. Instagram.