As she’s helped me out when it comes to stuff like being human and looking professional to employers, I think she deserves to be in the first couple people I mention.

As I mentioned in the post about Joycee, Karen was part of the group of people who started coming to the open mics with him at the end of 2014. For the first year that I knew her, I barely spoke to her….cause she barely spoke. The only time I’d ever hear her speak is when she was chatting to Jane or Joycee and Mark were slagging (poking fun at) her. Now, I’m the sort of person who feels that everyone has to amuse me in some way so after several attempts at trying to make her talk, I just decided it was more fun to throw bar coasters at her.

As the months went on, we spoke very few words to each other. This was due to the fact she had the appearance of having her head screwed on and I was very immature. Our personalities were worlds apart. Once I got to know her, I learned that appearances can be deceiving.

During the Summer of 2015, I had a couple gigs downstairs in The Cellar Bar. During my second one, she offered to work the merchandise stand for me, I’d completely forgotten to get somebody to do it at the gig before. After this, we started getting along better.

At the end of 2015, it got quiet. There wasn’t much going on and a lot of people disappeared from the Roisin. I didn’t see her around this time. It wasn’t until the summer of 2016 that she started messaging me to get tea. The idea of being out in public during the day terrified me. This was the summer that everyone I know fuckin disappeared off the face of the Earth and I spent most of the summer in a house on my own so I was up for giving it a go. I’d also pop into her where she worked if it was quiet just to get myself out of the house.

As she has led an interesting life due to her diabetes, I filmed a documentary on her in my final year of college

My friendship with Karen has helped me greatly from learning not to go into a full on panic in a small coffee shop to even moving to Glasgow. Whenever it came to job hunting and CV stuff, if I didn’t know what to do I’d message her in a huge panic, as most of my messages to people are. Even though she now has a child, I appreciate that I always come first.