Pants, Glitter, Money
Memories of Sarah

A year ago today my amazing friend and partner in crime, Sarah, passed away.

When Sarah died, I was not in a fit state to write about her so I am doing this now on the anniversary of her death.

Music

The first time I met Sarah was at Glastonbury Festival 2010, when she had got a lift with someone she had never met, we were part of a group that go to festival on their own.

In 2013 we went to see The Stone Roses in Finsbury Park. Before the gig, we went to The Bree Louise (a pub we frequented often which has since been demolished for HS2) to meet friends. Our friend, who dances like he is trying not to stand on small creatures, had smuggled a bottle of rum, into the gig, inside a sun tan lotion bottle. Unfortunately, he had not wash out the bottle before hand this however didn't stop us finishing then whole bottle.

Also in June 2013 at Glastonbury there was Chic on the West Holts Stage. This gig was carnage and so. much fun, there was a group of about 40 of us all dressed up in sparkles and covered in glitter, you could probably see us all sparkling from the International Space Station.

In 2016 we went to Massive Attack at Brixton Academy, it was just 3 weeks after David Bowie had died and on the way to the gig we stopped and cried at the David Bowie Memorial. We were sat at this gig near the back, Sarah & her friend kept going to the bar until they ran out of rum.

We both had a love of Pink Floyd I took her to Hyde Park in July 2018 to see Roger Waters perform Dark Side of the Moon. The last time I saw her in person was when we went to the BFI IMAX to see the remastered Live at Pompei, in April 2025.

The last gig I went to with Sarah was to see Stevie Nicks in Hyde Park, in July 2024, with my festival wives.

Pants, Glitter, Money

Sarah had two phrases that she used all the time one was: Tits of Death, to describe how cold she was at times. The other was: Pants Glitter Money, which was what said was the only things that you needed to pack for a festival, everything else would just work itself out.

Sarah was also a champion for women and the trans community, so this year at Bearded Theory Festival (this was the first big festival we had without Sarah), I made some badges to celebrate her life and gave them out to all of our festival family. I also gave a hand full of them to the Lambrini Girls and Phoebe wore one on stage. Sarah would have loved the Lambrini Girls.

Sequinned Hot Pants

In 2017 we went to our friends wedding in a valley in Northumberland and during the party afterwards one of my friends persuaded me that I should clean my festival wives tent in arseless chaps at Bearded Theory festival 2018. Drunkenly I agreed and that I would do this as a fund-raiser for The Brain Tumor Charity, this got featured on their website and I managed to raise over £2000 for the charity.

When it came to May 2018 and Bearded Theory, one of my friends had bought me some Arseless Chaps. On looking at these I was not overly joyed, I hadn't until this point truly understood what Arseless Chaps were. In order to make this a little less risky Sarah took me shopping and we ended up finding some Red Sequinned Hot Pants for me to wear under the said Arseless Chaps, it is after all a family friendly festival.

I still own these today and everytime I see them my heart glows with the memories of Sarah.

Funeral

Sarah's sister asked me and other friends to help out with a number of things for the funeral.

The first was to do with Music, she knew that Dark Side of the Moon was very important to Sarah, but did not know the album and asked what song she would want. I explained that actually she would want the whole album. It turns out that there are limits to the length of funeral and so we settled on Great Gig in the Sky.

The next was to organise a group for the festival family to carry to coffin into the crematorium, this was a huge honour for all of us who were involved.

The dress code for the funeral was rainbows and there was also lots of glitter. There were so many of the festival family that there wasn't enough room for us all to fit into the venue.

Things that don't suck

Sunlight through the trees.
The sky.
When it's cold, and you can see your breath in the air.

Green leafy plants,
Perfect coffee,
Rainbows and live music.

Lights that twinkle,
The smell of bread,
People with real names that sound like stage names.

Snow.
Press for champagne.
Forests and David Bowie.

Christmas trees,
Narrowboats and the community of women.
Laughter lines.

Campfires and singalongs,
Homegrown tomatoes,
Magical people.

Great books and women in power!
Being cold and made warm by a blanket.
Watching Belle dance.

Sunlight on the water,
Misty mornings,
Sunrise.

Picky bits for dinner,
The moon in any phase;
Festivals.

Low-level lighting,
Pizza and Fleetwood Mac,
Perfect red lipstick.

The NHS,
Great friends and Paris
Laughter through tears.

Snuggles,
Original cockney street performers,
Cocktails.

Swimming outside,
Dogs on the beach,
Peonies.
Mountains.

True love...

Written by Sarah, when everything sucked!

This is just few tales about what shenanigans we got up to together, I miss my friend Sarah so very much! I still send her messages even though I know that she will not see them and I shall never stop.