SALLY and ALEX

I arrived in London with my head full of dreams of getting a nice flat, preferably in Covent Garden/Leicester Square/Oxford circus area, but DEFINITELY NOT outside zone 3 on the tube...
If I couldn't become an actress at least i would be some hot shots secretary who wore pencil squirts and 10 inch stilettos..
Well..bless me is really all I can say...
I got a job at Wentworth golf club which took me over an hour to get to from where I was staying in Elephant and Castle.
When I came for the interview I was told that this was a "live-in" position and a room was available for me in 10 days time.
Me and Sally worked together in the Tennis pavilion where the very rich ladies would "hang out", their children had their own membership cards which also worked as a credit card so they could charge sweets and drinks to their parents bills.
I had never been around people like these and thought i could talk to them the same way as i talked to my friends back home, but I very soon found out that we were different, they had money and i didn't, so that made me less worthy of them.

After working at the tennis pavilion for 8 days I was told that actually the room i had been promised wasn't available anymore because they had to give it to a new chef who was more important than me.
I tried in vain to say that "I was here first, you promised me" but obviously to no avail what so ever.
I told them to "stuff their job" and ran out with tears streaming down my face, not really sure where I would go.

Sally ran after me and handed me a very strong cigarette that gave me a head rush, and said that I could come and stay with her for a couple of days.
So i went to the hotel, packed my bags and left London for good.
Sally lived with her fiance Alex, their baby boy Cameron and two other people who were expecting their first baby.
These living arrangements were alien to me and I couldn't get my head round the fact that four adults (5 with me), soon to be 2 babies, a dog and 5 cats lived in a house with 3 bedrooms.
What was supposed to be a couple of days stay turned into me living with them for 6 years with a few short periods when I briefly lived with other people.

I often think about what would have happened if Sally hadn't been there that day?
What if it had been her day off?
Had I gone back to Sweden then?
No, I don't think so, I was so stubborn back then and I had decided that I would live in England no matter what, so I would probably have gone back to the hotel and started all over again.

Luckily Sally was there and in her i found a big sister i never had, I asked her for advice on boys, love, life, career, friends.
Because the woman is always bloody right!
I used to be so annoyed that she would advise me not to do something "Because this and this will be the consequences" that i would do it anyway and when those consequences came thundering down on me she would tell me in a very nice sisterly way "well I sort of told you so honey".

Sally has always been there for me.
We were never the friends that went out and got drunk together, because she got married to Alex only 5 months after we met, and they started a family, but in between her pregnancies we often shared a bottle of wine (or three) in front of the telly on a Friday night.
Most of my memories about Sally and Alex is with me not understanding something and they very patiently explaining it to me.
For example, it took me quite some time to be able to watch a film without subtitles and not concentrating so hard that I would develop a headache.
It was easier if we rented a comedy or if I knew what the film was about before we started watching it.
One evening Alex had rented "Mercury rising".

When I was in school, me and my friends made up "codes" all the time, which consisted of changing every letter in the alphabet to either another letter OR a symbol.
This was carefully written down in notebooks and named.
So if you came across a word that made no sense you took out your "code book" and changed the symbols or letters to the correct letters and that way you have cracked the code.
But if you didn't have the book with all the codes it wasn't possible to crack the code.
So i obviously couldn't understand how the boy (even though he is autistic and very clever) could break the code? he didn't have the rest of the code, that you need to break it...
Alex paused the movie and tried to explain what a code is..
Our conversation went something like this....:
Me: How does he know the code?
Alex: Er.. because he is autistic, and very clever
Me: Yes but where is the rest of the code?
A: What do you mean?
M: The rest of the code...for him to break the code.
A: That is the code, the code is "If you can read this Call this number"
M: But it cant be
A: But it is
M: But where is the rest of the code?
A: There is no rest of the code
M: But there must be
At this point Alex is feeling a bit frustrated and Sally tried to explain to me that the sentence "If you can read this, call this NR" is the whole code
So our conversation carried on somewhat like this:
Me: But how can he know what the code is?
Sally: Because he is extremely clever, due to his autism
M: Yes but codes are easy, I can break a code i just need the rest in front of me
S: There is no "rest of the code"
M: But there must be

It carried on like this for approx 20 minutes at which point Alex was so wound up and annoyed with me he had to leave the room.
He then went to bed and told Sally that he couldn't deal with me any more.
We watched the film the next day and by the end of it I did understand what a "code" was.
This conversation gets brought up whenever I say something a bit weird that I don't understand. "Is it like a code Mia?"

Sally and Alex are two of my favourite people in the world, they are loyal, caring and very funny to be around.
We became family, because they made me a part of their family.
Officially I'm god mother to their 3rd child, but in my heart all 4 of them are my god children and I love them as if they were my own.
I will miss them tremendously when I move.

It would be perfect and very suitable to have a photo of me and Sally here wouldn't it?
Unfortunately there is none...
But since sally is a hard core Queen fan..I will leave you with one of the songs we used to play in her car. On a cassette tape may I add....