Name: Julie Allum
When and where: Sunday, April 3rd, 2016 at The Rainbow’s End, Glastonbury, England
Beverage: hot lemon and ginger
Last time we met in person: on my visit to England in April 2015
Friends on Facebook: since November 2007
Friends in real life: since July 15, 1990

I know the exact day Julie (and her other half Dave, who has the good sense to not be on Facebook himself) and I became friends, because I have a photo taken that day which has the date written on the back:

My boyfriend at the time, Steve (the one laying on the ground pointing at the camera) worked with Simon (the guy on the left) who introduced us to his friends Dave and Julie (center) at Tamworth Rockfest, headlined by Wolfsbane. We all lived in the Birmingham area and would hang out regularly at gigs and clubs, and also went on several holidays together. I moved to Cornwall in 1996, just a couple of months after Dave & Jules moved to Glastonbury, which was conveniently halfway between Birmingham and Cornwall. We would frequently get together either in Glastonbury or Cornwall, or sometimes I’d drive up to them and then we’d carpool together up to Birmingham. For the five years I lived in Cornwall, they were most definitely my closest friends and I would have been lost without them. When I married Chris in 2001, Julie was one of my bridesmaids.

Our meeting today took place when I was en route from Birmingham Airport, where I’d just flown in from Boston (via Dublin), to Cornwall. My friend Mal was driving, and we called in at Glastonbury for a lunch break and to meet Dave & Jules’ new kitties, Eddie and Monty. We walked into Glastonbury to get lunch at the Rainbow’s End, which was my favorite vegetarian café when I used to spend a lot of time there. It has new owners now, but it hasn’t changed much. The food is still delicious. We talked about all sorts of stuff: music, television shows we’ve been watching, families, and arrangements for the upcoming ELO show which we would be attending together a couple of weeks later. After a little stroll around town to see the sights, Mal and I left them to make our way onward to Cornwall.