Champange Evening, London December 2007
Every year Donna and Franc hold a soiree in their north London pied-a-terre, where the drink is sophisticated and bubbly, and the conversation starts off with equally high standards but more often than not, ends up firmly in the gutter. Each year Tash and I try to reinterpret the Black Tie and Cocktail dress, dress code and this year I fancied going all 1970's, my mojo's decade of choice, having the beard helped a lot in that decision I might add. So off we popped on the Saturday morning to find a second hand clothes shop in the more fashionable end of Shoreditch, Tash already had that orange dress and had been looking for an excuse to wear it for ages.

In recent weeks I have struggled to find a memory of Tash that doesn't also have some element of her treatment or cancer attached to it. Whilst in Port Douglas this was becoming quite distressing until I remembered this evening and this picture particularly. It helped me to remember the love between us at a time when I thought that the only memories I would have would be cancer related. That is a proper squeeze she is giving me, she thought I looked "cool" in my outfit and I was happy to finally see her in that dress in the right environment, she had tried to wear it before, but it had got "the flick" on numerous occasions because, well lets be honest, there are very few places one could wear an orange nylon dress, but she found one.

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