Rachel Greatsall

This is the longest time I have not blogged for. Not because nothing's happened, because loads of thing have happened and I haven't had time to write about them. Since my last blog in December we had Christmas and New Year, I became 30, we had an offer accepted on a new house. My sister moved to the southern hemisphere after I threw underwear at her at a comedy gig (unrelated I hope) and most significantly of all I achieved a life long dream of seeing what happened when you laminate ham. (This is what happened.)

Today I went to the zoo with Dan, Percy and Rachel, and last Wednesday I celebrated the 30th birthday of Rachel and I thought "it is a travesty that I haven't yet dedicated a blog to Rachel Goodsall my bridesmaid, godmother to my child and the ham laminating facilitator who I am renaming "Rachel Greatsall." We have been friends for over a 3rd of our lives now ,since we met in halls when we were 19. So I thought I'd share some of my favourite Rachel moments.

Our student days were the best, particularly the two years in Oakbank road. Playing pranks on each other, having crazy themed parties, doing circus tricks, watching America's Next Top Model, breaking up and getting together with boys. Scanning our faces in my scanner, staying up chatting till 3am and getting up at 11. BBQs in the park, poker, fancy dress, cheese sauce making competitions, hiding most of the plates because no one would wash up if they could find a clean plate somewhere else. Those were the days.

Pirate party

I know what we should do, lets draw on our faces with chalk!

Organised Rachel looked after the bills and admin for our house of 5 that was made up of 3 messy unorganised dyslexics. (I'm sure Suze did her fair share of this too). In return we tried to encourage her to quit smoking with this helpful and informative campaign:

Rachel saved us from missing the plane back from a holiday together in Norway by telling us the time the plane was leaving was about half an hour before it actually left. If she hadn't done that we would have missed it. (On the way there I had the flight booked for the wrong month and had to buy a new ticket at the airport.)

Rachel's super power is her colour coordination skills. When she goes on holiday she picks a colour theme because she can't take all her clothes so she takes everything in one colour with matching accessories. She always dresses to impress even in the countryside where no one cares.

Rachel was one of my bridesmaids when I got married. She also looked after our house when we were on honeymoon and filled it with lovely treats. To do this it meant she had to ask me for the key the day before my wedding in front of all of Dan's family, claiming she would keep an eye on it if an alarm went off or whatever. I told her she didn't live near enough for that and there was no need for her to have a key so she had to embarrass herself and have an argument with me in front of everyone until I gave in and let her have the key.

Rachel is a brilliant God Mother to Percy, she's always spoiling him with little gifts. His favourite teddy that he sleeps with is from her. She even knitted him a caterpillar outfit when he was newborn.

Thanks for being amazing Rachel, here's to another decade of friendship. xx