Eve

What to say about Lulu

I have so much to say that I can’t condense into a speech. At the same time, I have no idea what to say or what's right to say because this isn’t a normal situation. All I want to convey is my endless love and adoration for Lu, and for Carolyn, Stephen, Seth and Paddy, who I consider my family.

To sum up Lulu, let alone the shit that me and Lulu got up, would take an epic Game of Thrones length kind of series. I’m not really sure how to write a good speech, especially for an occasion like this, but what I want is to capture Lulu as she is and always will be.

The best way I could describe Lulu is like a bipolar baby elephant. Endless energy and vigour for life. Determined. The minute she doesn’t want to do something, you’ll know about it. But equally, when she puts her mind to something, she will barge down anything in her path to do it, and will put up a fight kicking and screaming. A ray of sunshine with the ability to give you hell if she needed to. She’s the first to do what no one else has the balls to do. Whether it’s charging a lass on the rugby pitch, piercing her own ears with a needle and an orange, tattooing herself, picking a fight. I never said that everything she did was clever, but she did everything with meaning.

It’s safe to say that Lu was not a forgettable character. Even people who had met her very briefly can recognise that she was ultimately unique. And in that brief period, you could tell on her face exactly what she thought of you. Lulu is extremely friendly and outgoing, but if you didn’t return that energy, god forbid you heard the vile things me and her would say in private. It warms me to see all the people she has touched and affected, and it amuses me when I think about what she’d be saying now. Wherever she is, I have no doubt she’ll be chatting shit. When I’ve been down, I can feel her saying ‘Stop being a pussy and grow up’. But she’ll let me be upset, just for a little bit.

Lulu being the sheer force of nature that she is, some may say that she’s a lot. You walk into a room and you know whether Lulu is in it or not. Me and Lucy would hear her stomping down the corridors to wait for us at the end of the day. In a group of people, you could always point her out as the mop of interestingly dyed hair poking out above the others. She would say that she didn’t understand how I could put up with her. But being in her presence was a pleasure and privilege, even if she could be a bit of a dickhead. But somehow our dynamic just worked, I could tolerate her better than most. Even then she would wind me up until I finally lost my cool with her, then she’d give me the puppy dog eyes. She was a big softy. She thought she was proper hard, and she’d be the first to pipe up against anyone, but for the people she loved she had so much room in that massive heart of hers. She absolutely adored Paddy from the get go and I’m so grateful that she had someone who could love her so fiercely and beautifully.

Our Parisian adventure was probably the best holiday ever. It had a level of class that our trip to Magaluf lacked. That said, Lulu said Bongo’s Bingo in Maga was the best night out of her life, despite her breaking her prosthetic and me and her having a shouting match on some random street at about 12.30am.

I think about us waking up at 6am to go to the Louvre. One of my favourite memories with her is probably us dicking about in the Louvre, taking selfies with all the creepy old statues. We spent about 2 hours going through the worst display of old paintings in the Louvre and tired ourselves out to the point where we decided we couldn’t be arsed with the Mona Lisa. The next day, we woke up at 5am to get the Metro into the city centre for Disneyland. Disneyland did creep us out, but there was no bigger child I would have rather spent the day with. If there’s one thing about Lulu I am going to seriously miss, it’s her disabled fast pass. The next time I have to queue for the Smiler at Alton Towers… But these are the kind of bittersweet memories that I will cherish, and make me wish I appreciated the time we spent together more while we still had it.

To mourn someone so particularly young and so particularly vibrant and to mourn someone that just should not be dead is really difficult.

I know it not only conjures the deepest and most painful sadness in our hearts, but it makes me mad, it makes me angry. Throughout this whole process that's the one emotion that I’ve felt the most, a bitter and disgusting anger. But I know that Lu would not want that. She’d want me to be mad and upset for a bit, don’t get me wrong. But ultimately, she’d want us to grab life by the bollocks and carry on pushing forward because that’s just her nature. I don’t think she’d want us move on, rather carry her with us, and charge head first into all the beautiful things that exist in this world. I can’t begin to describe how terribly I miss her, and how the world feels lonelier without her. But I will see her in every brilliant and beautiful thing. She always talked about seeing her grandad in sunsets, and although I’m not into the whole spiritual malarkey, I think that whenever I see something brilliant, or equally something shockingly hilarious that only she’d find funny, I’ll feel a little less lonely.

Catch you on the flip side Lu