So, the war took an interesting turn this week. To catch you up, my best friend and I have been locked in a battle of long-distance practical jokes for the past couple of years. It started, like a lot of weird hobbies, in the middle of the COVID pandemic. We were both bored and stuck at home, slipping daily into deeper anxieties about the state of the world, and needed some silly distraction.
It's impossible tell who fired the first shot. It could have been me. It could have been anyone. In the interests of journalistic integrity, I called her this week to ask who she thought started it all.
"It was you," she said without hesitation.
Like I said - impossible to tell.
Maybe it was the time I commissioned Lord of the Rings actor Billy Boyd through the website Cameo to sing her happy birthday and, with a dash of (even if I do say so myself) genius mischief, had him innocently joking that he thinks of her beloved pet rabbit every time he wears his slippers.
Maybe it was the time she had two authors inscribe copies of their books for me, in turns congratulating me on my new face tattoo and for finally kicking my meth habit. (I should say, for the record, I have never taken meth and my face remains undecorated).
There have, of course, been moments of grace as well. For my birthday this year, she gave me the coffee mug that I'm drinking from as I write this. It has two photos of my face on it.
"Is that you on that mug?" She asks every time we video call, "That's a bit pretentious, mate."
In a return act of selfless good will, I have promised never to reveal that she regularly car-karaokes the lyrics to the Choirboys Run to Paradise as "Urunga Paradise" - something she revealed one night over a few drinks, asking with palpable sincerity that even though she was sure Urunga was a lovely place to visit, didn't we think calling it literal "paradise" was over-egging it a bit?
True to my word, I've never told a soul - even the time that I actually got to meet Choirboys frontman Mark Gable on assignment for the paper. Your secret - as promised - is safe with me.
Which brings us to this week and the start of that season famous for laying down one's arms in the name of peace and taking stock of another year.
Ours is certainly not the most conventional of friendships (she calls it "combative" - good one), but guerilla warfare aside, it occurs to me that it is the truest friendship I have ever had.
It's also the longest.
In between the daily firefights, we have grown up together. Perhaps not all the way to being full grown-ups (he writes, sipping coffee from a mug bearing his own image), but we have seen each other change, become adults, fall in and out of love. Big, identity-forging stuff. It's a hell of a thing to think about.
At the risk of sounding sincere for a moment, I have to say I am truly grateful for you, mate ... so there.
Your move.
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