Picasso's Muse

She’s always going to be ShinyRuby to me! Shiny has become a fantastic friend outside of 43T. Even though we’ve never met, we connect a lot on a regular basis. If things are a bit crap, I’ll sometimes text her cos I know she’ll say exactly the right thing to make me feel better. There’s very few people that I trust to do that but she’s one of them and she’s great at it.

We have a lot of things in common, her and I. We are both fledgling eco-warriorettes, we both have a strong desire to travel, we’re on an eternal quest for good health and we love anything creative. So we can talk for hours. In fact, the only thing I am completely bemused by is her love of yoga. But that’s because I can’t even do a salute to the sun.

So instead I will salute you, Shiny!

I think she’s going to do down in history as one of New Zealand’s great leaders. She is a strong, intelligent and compassionate woman who knows her own mind. I’ve met her a few times in completely different settings and each time she has impressed me as being an excellent listener and very focused on the person she is speaking with.

Once I wrote a speech on a particular topic for her. Do you know how long it takes to write a 15 minute speech for a Prime Minister? DAYS! Needless to say I was excited at the prospect of watching her deliver the words I’d so carefully crafted. But to her credit, she did not read my speech word for word. In fact she changed it a lot. She’s no one’s puppet and I admire the fact that she knows so much about such a wide range of subjects.

When I first got dumped at the tender age of 15 or 16, I spent the next month listening to “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” over and over and over again. Once I’d exhauted that song I moved on to “I Know It’s Over”. It was like Morrissey was right there with me holding my hand and telling me it was okay to wallow in my own misery. I knew I was starting to recover from my heartbreak when “Bigmouth Strikes Again” (sweetness sweetness I was only joking when I said I’d like to SMASH every tooth in your head) became my song of choice. Then I started going out with my dumper’s best friend who was a much nicer boy anyway.

So I’d like to tell Morrissey how his lyrics helped me through those critical times in my teenage years. And that I didn’t much care for that whole daffodil thing. And that everyone knows he’s gay and they’re fine with it so he should be too. And to find out if there is any chance at all of a reunion tour a la The Police, Led Zepp, Sex Pistols.

Picasso’s muse is an intelligent, sensitive person. She also shares my deep abiding love for all things Moz-related. Oh, and she looks a bit like Clarisa Flockhart (don’t hold this against me Picasso’s muse)

;D