Most things I worry 'bout never happen anyway.

We have friends in Lancaster, Philadelphia. When I say friends, we've met once. Dublin, May this year. We were on a travel package to see Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. So were Bill & Liz. They had combined it with a European trip. We were sat together at a fantastic gig and then stayed up in the hotel bar, for hours. You know when you just click with people? That was it. They flew back to the States, we flew back to London. I found Bill on LinkedIn (the only use I've ever found for it) and e-mailed him. Since then we've kept in touch quite a bit. Last night, watching the devastation of hurricane Sandy on the news, I suddenly had a horrible feeling of impending doom. I e-mailed Bill and got a scary reply. The town was being evacuated but they were staying put. They'd boarded up, sand-bagged, all the things we would do. They have a beach house on the Jersey shore which was being hit at that moment. I sent him our best and went to bed. Which just looks crap when you read it like that. I e-mailed again this morning and several more times today. Slowly, his replies got more hopeful until, this afternoon, he explained that, incredibly, they and their house, were fine. Even the Jersey house looks to have survived, although the water in the town is 12 feet deep in places. I joked back, told him how pleased we were, and signed off with a line that I have tried to live my life by, in the past few years. I used to worry about everything. I mean really worry. Then, 18 years ago, something happened which changed my world. By the time I got through it, my outlook had changed. We met Bill & Liz for 9 hours but I couldn't be happier that they and their family are safe. I don't know what that means but I shall raise a glass tonight. The sign-off line is the title of this blog entry. It's from this Tom Petty song, Crawling Back To You. Stay safe everyone.

Get your own valid XHTML YouTube embed code