Music Monday: Coal Chamber

This song - Big Truck, by long-forgotten metal band Coal Chamber - basically consists of the lead singer growling "big truck" into the mic ad infinitum, and if you value your eardrums I would suggest you don't click on the link.  However, for some reason, in 1997-98  it became something of a theme tune for me and my best friend Kirsty.  We'd met while working behind the bar at the local rock dive, Alcatraz, and quickly bonded over a mutual love of skater boys and body piercing.  Kirsty seemed to me to be infinitely cool, self-assured and confident.  I was astounded when she chose me to be her friend, but choose me she did, and we proceeded to get up to many alcohol-fuelled adventures over the next few years.

Me (red bits in Bjork-inspired twists) and Kirsty (80s crimped hair) at a gig in 1997.  The pre-Bravissimo years were not kind to us well-endowed girls.

15 years is a long time and our lives have changed enormously.  She left Leicester, met her husband-to-be fairly soon after, and I was honoured to be their bridesmaid in 2004.  As my teaching career was taking off, Kirsty had the first of her two children.  On the surface of it, we have little in common nowadays, but our friendship is the kind that allows us to pick up exactly where we left off; to always have something to talk about; to always be able to laugh together. 

Better coiffed, if a little windswept, 8 years later at Kirsty's wedding.

Kirsty, bless her, endured 4 hours of traffic and torrential rain on Friday, to come to Leicester for a party I was holding.  I was immensely touched that she made the effort to come all the way from Manchester, but as she rightly said, "you drove to France for my wedding, you've been to two christenings for my kids, the least I can do is travel down the M1 for a night out."  We ended the night in a dark, dingy club - one not unlike Alcatraz - and it was as if the years melted away and we were 19 again. 

Somewhere, in a box in the cupboard under the stairs, I still have the original 'big truck': a plastic toy given to me for Christmas one year with a note that just said "BIG TRUCK!".  Life changes; people change, but dodgy metal songs and plastic trucks endure.