Meet the gang

Right. My best friends. They will come up alot, because they are my world, so you should probably meet them. The nulbering is convenience, rather than preference.

1. H. The bestest of them all. I have known her since I was 9, when I was a speccy weirdo and she was a lanky one. We played imaginary ponies, then got real ponies. We grew up and went to different senior schools. I came back one holiday to find that she had suddenly shot up and become the most jaw-droppingly languid beauty. I trailed in her wake, feeling miserable, fat and squat. She sat, listened, understood, never judged, gently pushed me in the right direction when I wouldn't listen to anyone else, made me kiss boys who I was sure didn't want to kiss me (they did), held my head, and never ever left my side. (Mentally.physically she obviously did.) We will end our days in some rambling country house, surrounded by dogs, pigs, chickens and ponies. She is the love of my life. My father says he pities the fool who marries one of us before the other one. So beautiful she silenced the college rugby team when she walked through the quad of my Oxford college. So great that we can sit in silence watching ANTM and eating rockies for hours on end. So weird that she totally understands my sense of humour. Just the best.

2. R. Ginger, looks like an actual 50s movie starlet. Has the kind of face that people stop in the street and say 'Wow, you are so beautiful! I LOVE your hair'. Also has the kind of personality which you cannot not like. Everyone who has ever met her loves her, from my parents to the meanest girl I know. She has a gift with people. This would make me jealous, only I think that it is quite possibly the most awe-inspiring thing ever.We bicker like sisters, and she makes me a better person, pushes me to do things I don't want to do. She bequeaths brilliant vintage dresses to me, ones I would never have the courage to buy on my own, which I then wear to death. We knew each other for ages through mutual friends, and then she came to 6th form college in the year below me, we starred in a Winchester College production of 'Oh! What a Lovely War!', and the rest is history. I still remember the director's speech at the after party, where he thanked everyone else individually, yet siad to us 'And you two, you two... Thank you for being so wonderfully vibrant and sexy.' It is one of my favourite things anyone has ever said. Well read, erudite, witty, creative, beautiful and stylish, and yet more than happy to spend a week in the Scottish wilds clubbing fish to death and scrambling over rocks. Purrr.

3. C. A leg-shaking, jameson-swilling lanky bundle of fun. Wonderful. Met her at H's 14th birthday party and one of us opened with the line 'You're my new best friend'. I say it was her, she says it was me. It doesn't matter. We have never been to school together yet she's right up there. Kind and compassionate to the point of self sabotage, vegetarian, teetering on the brink of alcoholism, relentlessly energetic and immense. Favourite travelling companion.

4. K. We met at interview, which I don't remember and she does. I told her I had 35 cardigans and she hated me as a consequence. Fair enough. We both got in to Oxford, and slowly formed an inseparable bond helped by the catalyst of the scariest french grammar teacher ever and utterly abysmal marks. She is matter-of-fact, very good at cutting through my bullshit, and amazing with boys. She has also had the hardest two years of her life and come through it in one dignified and balanced piece, which I could never tell her because she will not be pitied. She has made the worst parts of my year abroad bearable because she is going through them too, and to top it all she has excellent taste in trashy cards.

5. A. A leetle crazy, but I still love her with all my heart. Wonderfully warm hearted. Again, beautiful.

6. L. Home to me. Just wonderful little ball of energy who swooshes in at exactly the right moment and makes everything better. I will never see her enough again, as this is her last year in Oxford and we are both busy busy gals with different friendship groups, but this does not matter because she will always be there in some form somehow. I could not see her for 5 years (GOD forbid) and it would not change, within two seconds we would be yabbering away, skipping and singing show tunes. Great clothes, razor-sharp wit, inexhaustible knowledge of celebrity trivia, and so PRETTY.

7. R. Genius cheese-eating chemist. Funny funny funny. Annoyingly cool exterior which conceals her nerdy weirdness underneath. Brilliant.

Seeing the majority of them over the last few days in England has been cracking but completely exhausting. I can barely see straight.

Xx