It was just about a week after I've turned thirty.

Away from my family (including the family of friends I've spent the biggest chunk of my twenties and immigration experience with, and then lost to a divorce and a life re-shuffle), but surrounded by a completely new, unexpected, BONKERS AS HELL and wonderful swarm of human oddities you can only collect in London,

I've entered my thirties with a confidence and excitement for this new life unravelling in front of me.

I'm nervously pacing up and down the Dean Street in Soho one morning before work, freshly thirty but feeling again like a little boy, as I'm waiting for David to go and do a test prevention for any deviant-homosexualist-related diseases together at the Dean Street walk-in clinic (which, as you can imagine, is far from a pleasant experience, albeit necessity, more so when you have just turned thirty but your relationship is only turning two months).

David is running late, so I'm here, marching and skipping and sometimes tripping over my own feet as I do, listening to my latest musical obsession Oh Wonder (the Landslide track, that I would put on the loop until a complete exhaustion, before moving onto another one), not suspecting I'm about to receive a belated birthday present from the city of London.

I happen to glance across the street and there they are, Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West from Oh Wonder, doing a photo shoot..only in London magic is still alive! I went to consult Google quickly to confirm I'm not dreaming, and when their pictures came out in the search, I knew I have to make that awkward leap and go say hi. Which I did. And boy, awkward it was.

I started with something like 'Excuse me, are you two musicians by any chance?', then went on babbling enthusiastically about how I've been just now listening to Landslide (before realising their album is not officially out yet, uuups) and when David showed up, managed to get a picture.

And of course it wouldn't be me - the only picture I got looks like down below I'm WAY TOO EXCITED to see them.

Which I don't think had been the case, but cannot vouch for.

The second, life-long gift, related to Oh Wonder came three months later, when (this time being familiar with all of the songs, not just the forever repeated Landslide) we saw them in concert and danced, sung and completely impromptu picked up a new best buddy on random.

Carol Lawrence from New Orleans, who would instantly become one of the dearest friends and adversaries to our shenanigans.

Carol Lawrence - an insane mental health worker, who in herself is mental beyond any limits known to man, which is probably why she makes for a fitting therapist.

Carol Lawrence, a profound American with a bug for travels, who we hope will take us to our dream voodoo-swampy-mardigras-jazzy-ghosts-and-jambalaya-infested-neworleans-adventure, followed with a trip to Cuba (where I hope to get all the rum for free when I confess to the indigenous that my name too is Kuba).

Carol Lawrence, who just casually awaited our arrival hanging at our neighbour’s house (who we’ve never met before), which is how the horror films start, and bravely devoured an improvised slimy green broccoli&potato mash cheese and sausage bake to thematically match the new Ghostbusters film on the projector.

Carol Lawrence, an enthusiast for whatever foul concoction of alcohols I come up with (and those who has the bad luck to have me in their lives know by now that I come with only two downfalls which is a complete inability to sing and to mix liquids to any pleasant result).

What followed was a year of dancing, being it just three of us with the lights out and tequila in David's living room, or twerking through the Notting Hill Carnival, laughing loudly as only Americans can do,

and bracing ourselves for oh-so-wondrous future together.