I’d like to say a quick thank you before I start with my speech today. To the internet. The internet is the reason Jon and I met, to a certain extent, and the reason we’ve not drifted apart. I was truly honoured to be asked to be Jon’s best man, and it means a great deal to me. i think we’ll both admit to being generally rubbish, and don’t see each other as much as we should, and its the internet which has allowed us to chat to each other most days despite the 600 miles and classic ‘boys being rubbish’. Its also great for downloading movies. More on that later.
i first met jon at on my first day at university, about ten years ago. true to form, jon had managed to turn up to university a week early. apparantly the university had assumed the name of carlos signified spanish descent, and invited him one week before most of the students arrived, along with the other foreign students. As a result, when the rest of the school arrived a week later, jon had been pretty much a single white female, sorry, single white british student, whilst all of the other students were foreign. Jon, never one to hide away from a challenge, stepped up to the plate, and by the time we arrived, he’d already made a good number of relationships with the students in our halls. However, on my first day, we met jon waiting outside halls eagerly to go to the union with fellow brits. I was going up to the union, and jon invited himself along - this was the beginning of our beautiful friendship. it was also the only time jon managed to turn up on time for the rest of university.
apologies for my slipup earlier, saying single white female, but its easy to get confused. jon has often toyed with blurring the lines of gender. not only had the administration of wolverhampton university invited him a week early, but they’d also managed to put him on a girls corridor in halls. Joanna Carlos was born.
jon and i were on the same course, and quickly sparked up a friendship. his bedroom in halls was about as messy as mine, and it wasn’t long before jon was introducing me to his happy hardcore tastes in dance music, nor long before he demonstrated to all of us his special hamster dancing skills. i’m hoping he’ll show us some moves on the dancefloor later. of course, jon has always been rather acrobatic anyway. i don’t remember how we managed to find jon’s velvet leotard one day in his room, but upon his explanation that he was actually an award winning trampolinist, no more questions were asked.
My core group of friends at university quickly solidified, and felt more of a family unit than anything: myself and becky being mum and dad, robin and lissa being the kids, and jon as the out of work uncle who just always seems to be in your house when you get home, but you never gave him keys. in our second year, you’d have been forgiven thinking jon actually lived with us. Fond memories of jon sitting at the end of the bed, eating cold pizza, and clearing the room with bodily gases.
Time at university flew, mostly made up of doing very little work, and lots of late nights in the last weeks of term because we’d done very little work. It wasn’t long until we were required to start thinking about work placements. Jon was ecstatic to have found himself a job placement in Sunny Australia. It wasn’t until a little more detail was divulged that actually it was the original Perth, rather than the antipodean version. Nevertheless, Jon took to Scotland and met Dawn, and of course the rest is very much well known.
We went our seperate ways during our third year placements, Jon flew to Scotland, I to London, but the final year came upon us in quicker than a flash, and Jon, after much hard work and bribing of tutors, graduated. I remember graduation day so clearly. Each member of the class was called up in name order, and presented with their certificate. Once again, the administration of Wolverhampton managed to call out Jon as a Woman, and announced to the stage Joanne Carlos.
Jon is one of the most loyal, loving friends I’ve had the fortune to meet, and I’m so so grateful of his friendship, despite being at the other end of the country to each other. It is this exact reason, for my love and respect of you Jon, that i’m not going to tell everyone the story about when you got your beer stolen by 14 year olds, or how bad your homebrew made in the halls of residence bath tasted, or that you throw-up without really noticing like a baby, coating my arm in red wine in the toilet of time flies, craft activities with clingfilm, or take the mickey out of your once questionnable facial hair. Its just not fair, and I won’t do it. It was a really bad goatee though.
We had dinner with Jon and Dawn’s families last night, and we got onto the topic of Chillis and the chemical structure of their hotness (don’t ask) and Jon’s father said he had just realised the reason Jon and I are good friends, because of both of our attention to detail, and ability to retain tiny bits of information like that. Apart from the obvious irony, he couldn’t be more wrong, we’re both useless, and thats why we get on so well. This speech was written last night infront of Jon in the hotel bar whilst he was writing his. Needless to say, on Jon’s last night of freedom, he was sitting on his laptop reading the internet. So, thankyou again to the internet.
