OK, Owen is the biggest and most important relationship I have with anyone male. Now, don't get in a tizz about it. He's my brother, I love him. It's all quite normal. I can remember Owen once, when single and sitting in a bar in Amsterdam with me said "I mean, I'd really like to go out with someone like you, you know, someone I get on with without even having to try". Well, I don't think Caroline is much like me, so that discounts the Freud angle (apart from Caroline being Tod's middle name so that makes it even more confusing).

Point is, we lived together in his flat after I left university, and it was great. We had a laugh ninety-eight percent of the time, and we rowed the other two. Then he disappeared off to live in Amsterdam, and then to Canada. That was a bit more permanent. So we really, really missed each other all the time. We still do I think. After he left I felt bereft and seemed to latch on to Owen replacements like nobody's business. Stewart was Owen replacement number 1, which sort of worked because I was always a bit in awe of Owen and occasionally felt a bit awkward with him for no apparent reason - then had enormously long periods of comfortable messing about and laughing at nonsense. Yeah, that sounds like friendship with Stu. The most recent Owen replacement has been Danny, which seems to have hit its peak of Owen-ness just recently (circa June 98). At an Indian restaurant with Danny and Kai recently, we made stupid semantics and pun jokes about… well, to be honest I can't even remember what we joked about, but it was a very "Owen n' me" thing to do.