In the style of the letters in the opening montage of Marriage Story, but without the sad ending
What I Love About Hannah:
Hannah is a great listener: I can always sit down across from her at Papercup and pour my heart out to her for 3 hours about something revoltingly mundane - a flatmate stealing my towel, how I spent all my money on a night out & now can’t afford my usual £11 Papercup order of 2 oat flat whites and something on toast (then buy it anyway), and boys who sometimes are and sometimes aren’t worth my time. She listens patiently to me, no matter how trivial my trials are, and will always agree with me, even if (and this happens quite often) I am in the wrong. She gives great advice. She is the first person I go to for any sort of guidance because hers is usually the best. She also actively dislikes (perhaps even hates) anyone who has ever wronged me, which is great - but also totally unnecessary - because quite often I forgive them long before she will. It’s nice to know that someone cares about you enough to expend their energy on disliking someone on your behalf. I think that is a sign of true friendship.
Hannah has introduced me to lots of truly great people. She is the actual Queen (with a capital Q) of the West End. She knows everyone, everywhere. This means that if you go somewhere with her, you can usually get something free, which isn’t the only reason I hang out with her, but is a happy bonus. She can make friends with anyone, anywhere, in any situation. She has literally crafted a friendship from ordering hungover ramen… now we get to stay late at Ramen Dayo & dance on the tables. There is no chance I could make friends with anyone when I was hungover, in fact, even the people who love me actively despise my self-pitying presence on a hangover, so I’m very much in admiration of that. I love her friends. I love her family. I love going to her house to see them, and I love her house. I miss - and will continue to miss as the months drag on - both the physical space of her house and also the people who live inside it. I really do ALMOST love her mum.
I have also introduced Hannah to lots of people, but usually this is unintentional, when I accidentally invite someone who invites 70 other people to join onto what was meant to be a 1 on 1 hang-out. Once, one of my friends invited about 15 people to come and join us when we were celebrating her graduation by drinking prosecco and eating a deluxe scotch egg. I would like to say that it won’t happen again, but I know that it probably will, due to my diabolical inability to say no.
On the other hand, when I graduated, Hannah cooked me about 50 langoustines and we had a picnic on those with prosecco in her gardens. The contrast between home-cooked, fresh langoustines & a shop-bought scotch-egg is probably a fairly good microcosmic summary of just how good Hannah is to have as a friend. We got fairly drunk, and the next day I was sick outside Kelvingrove Art Gallery and also secretly at a brunch. Hannah, on the other hand, was absolutely fine. She has a tolerance for alcohol that I can only ever aspire to. I’m very jealous of that.
Hannah is always up for doing stupid, lame things (like these letters). Morning Breath is one big, lame, extended labour of love for female pop music. The superglue that initially brought us together & holds us together as Morning Breath still. To round off this cliched and overused metaphor, I would like to posit Harry Styles’ 2017 album, Shawn Mendes, and Friday I’m In Love by The Cure as the acetone to the glue between our friendship. These songs are the nail-varnish remover - left with the lid off overnight, so weakened a little bit - that superficially seeps its way between us.
Hannah is a GREAT person to spend money with. After a night catching up with Hannah, you are usually about £30 - £50 poorer than you were when you started with not even the smallest twinkle of regret the next morning. They say you cannot put a price on fun, but I would also argue that really there is no price that is too high for another bottle of wine. That being said, Hannah is dangerously generous. If I finish a night £50 poorer, then she is always, with very few exceptions, worse off than me. She is always the one to get an extra round, buy a round of shots, or find some sneaky way to improve the night that you wouldn’t think of. She is a giver with money & time, and I think that is a very precious and rare human quality.
Like me, she likes to take on about 5000 projects, stresses about them, and then chooses to ignore them by going for a pint/ aperol/ prosecco/ bowling. You want a friend who would rather get up at 6 am the next day to finish what needs to be done with a mild hangover, and stay for an extra drink. It’s nice to have someone you are one-hundred percent on the same page as.
We both know that Lidl croissants & 2 cups of tea is the perfect breakfast for anyone who is already awake at 8 am. Croissants best enjoyed eaten over the bag they came in - to avoid studio-floor crumbs - engulfed in 3 bites and probably in the middle/ towards the end of a Dua Lipa song… extra nice when eaten on-air. She makes a really great morning cup of tea - I should know - I have probably had about 50. When you think about that in terms of a normal-paced romantic relationship, it is probably about 6 months worth of morning teas. We are out of/ coming to the end of our honeymoon period.
She can string together a sentence under pressure in a way that I can only dream of. She has such a lovely voice that even my little brother confessed to having a tiny-baby crush on her, despite having never met her.
She is both my favourite radio host and favourite co-host. I cannot wait for the day that Heart FM sees sense and hires us to do their breakfast show.
