Fare Ye Well G12

Firstly I must apologise for what I reckon is going to be a bit of a girly sounding post.

Since I started writing this blog my relationship with Sri Lanka has grown and developed and I've become the proud owner of a huge pile of useful and useless knowledge. Change, the only thing that never changes, has taken place in ways I never imagined.

The best thing about this blogging thing? Friends. Not the series with Ross and Rachel and them, I mean the real thing. I've made some friendships that I hope will last for, well at least another week or two.

Blogging is quite a younger person's thing isn't it. The result of that is that I've met a lot of people, connected through blogging, who are a good deal younger than me. In fact we're talking about people whose parents are closer to my age than they are themselves.

It's a funny old thing, you connect through the medium of the net and the gap in age isn't necessarily apparent, certainly not a barrier. Meet a person like that in a bar or any other face to face environment and things are different.

One such example is G12. You might know her by her pen name; the Bohemian Gypsy. I first came across her penmanship a couple of years ago. I saw her blog and to be honest thought it was another one of those young twenty something ones, all edgy angsty writing and library pictures of girls in fields taken by a camera with vaseline smeared all over the lens.

But, like just about everyone, I got captured by the words. Yes, there are pictures of girls, babies, hearts and stars, just on the first page actually, but the writing is something else. If I wasn't dashing this post off in a hurry, if I were a proper writer, one who took time over their words, like G12 herself, then I'd trawl through her blog and link to her posts showing you the ones to read.

I'm lazy and I've got my tax return to sign and send off, so I just tell you to go through her blog if you have a spare few minutes. It's nice.

Where was I?

Oh yes. This G12 bird. Well over some time we got to know each other. It was the usual story; girl writes blog, old but intelligent and good looking bloke writes other blog. They comment on each others blogs, get friendly, meet and bloke has to tell girl that he won't sleep with her no matter what, that sort of thing.

But the Gyppo has honestly and seriously become one of my closest friends. I'm not really sure how or why, it's just happened. I see her every time I come to the motherland and I like it.

Then, some time ago she announced to the world that she was planning to leave Sri Lanka for that place, the one where they keep criminals and have barbecues.

Tomorrow she flies.

I feel happy and sad.

Sad because I'm one of the throng of people who'll miss her in Sri Lanka. It'll be a struggle but I reckon I'll still manage to have a good time there, just that there'll be something, or someone missing.

Happy because I admire G12 for what she's doing. It takes courage and balls to do a thing like this and I respect her for it. And I understand.

I value our friendship, I wish her the best of British luck and hope to see her soon in whichever part of the world we're in.

The best way to say bon voyage is to quote her own words, from her "about" page.

".....has only one ambition - which is to be happy for as much of her life as she possibly can. What's the point otherwise?....."