Tunnel of love

Alice would kill me. NOT love, friendship with 'Other A', her friend since the beginning of (time) nursery school. Just once Alice imagined Other A travelling with her in a horse and carriage, just to test the love theory I think, but he was hastily returned to his rightful place as most solid friend, and there he has remained since.

Having a boy as one of your best friends is not particularly cool and as they get older the teasing and idiocy from other kids gets worse. Alice insists at every available opportunity that they are just friends and Elsa has been banned from even the slightest whiff of a hint that there might be anything else in it. Alice's usually calm demeanour changes in a flash to fury so Elsa doesn't do it anymore.

Alice is pretty determined so I hope it's an enduring friendship that can stand the taunts as well as the tests of time and distance. Recently Other A and family have moved - they're still in London but in another country. I also hope that their own growing awareness of gender differences doesn't cause a rift.

Anyway so far so good and today we met Other A at a photography exhibition, but contrary to what you see before you we travelled by bus not by tube and we didn't walk through any tunnels.

It was the final day of the Bob Mazzer exhibition in Shoreditch. The man himself was there, with camera of course. He still takes tube pics amongst his other work as a 'jobbing photographer' as he referred to himself; most recently this morning travelling from his daughter's house in Archway. I nearly told him about Blip, but not quite.

It was a fantastic exhibition and so evocative of the times when AlfeeTee and I were out clubbing and gigging and travelling those very tube trains. So grimy compared to now and hopelessly romantic.

But look closely and you may see that this particular tunnel of love is, like Alice and Other A's supposed love, just an illusion.