Lulla

 Lulla and I have been mates since Year 11 when I changed high schools so I could study both French and Physics. Trust me. That's a dumb reason. But the change of high school was great for me.

He's a gentle giant with a loping walk. By the time we got to Year 12 and the dress code was free dress he spent the entire year in a selection of flannelette shirts and footy shorts. Even in winter! He was a bit of a smart arse and we had the same sense of humour and we were instantly great mates. He loved thrash metal and a bit of punk so we didn't really click there. The furthest extreme of my taste in music is probably The Cure.

I could never understand how he managed to concentrate on his Maths homework in the library while listening to Thrash full-bore on his walkman. He was brilliant at Maths and I was hopeless at it. He was mates with a Chinese guy at school called Sui, also brilliant at Maths, who ended up getting Dux and becoming a filthy rich, differentials trader. Lulla had other stuff going on and none of that was about being successful at school. He passed VCE but ended up at Victoria College and pretty much stuffed around in the student village until he left and got a job with Rio Tinto and he's been doing mining ever since. There was a brief hiatus in his mining career where he studied Computing at one of those training institutes and I really thought he was going to make it there but the recession came along and shut down the institute. Currently, he's stuck in Western Australia because the Coronavirus quarantine laws don't allow him enough time to return back to Victoria to his partner and son and then go back to work during his shifts.

Lulla was also friends with Moodge on the left of this shot (more on him in a bit) and a lot of my early 20s was spent hanging with the two of them.

He cultivated pretty much a skinhead look. This shot is misleading. You'd probably think we're an item. I'm rubbing sunscreen into his chest at Bondi Beach on New Year's Eve and my husband-to-be took the photo. Ours has only ever been a platonic relationship and I am happy to say he hooked up with an old Uni mate of mine and they've been together ever since and bred together.

At the beach, we'd just witnessed the funniest scene of a very plump old tart, dressed in a leather studded bikini on the beach eating a mango and letting it drip all over her chest supposedly for the whole beach's viewing pleasure, not their mirth. 

Lulla barracks for Collingwood so for years, with me being an Essendon supporter, there have been quite a few texts going back and forth especially when it's Anzac Day match.