Lies About My Friends (part 1): LARA

Little, if anything, is known about Lara. Sure, between us, her friends could quite easily compile great tomes of insightful follies based upon her momentary mystique. She’s synonymous with camaraderie and kinship. But as individuals, we, as friends, are fairly clueless. You see, the bigger picture, the full majesty of Lara, is a total enigma.

I, myself, have collected a few small shards from the mirror of gospel truth but nothing significant enough to reflect the unabridged chronicle. Example being - she famously keeps good time. You can literally set your watch by her. The most memorably party trick she has demonstrated, so far, is the uncanny ability to challenge the speaking clock. She has never been out by more than five seconds.

As a pal and confidant she is usually at hand to offer her opinion on matters of a sensitive nature. Yet, to this day, her most determined piece of advice has always been “You can never have too much glue”. You can rightly understand, therefore, why she scares the bejesus out of the majority of people.

To my knowledge, her favourite book is The Mouse And The Valentine. This is not, as most would believe, because she empathises with the bombastic characters or gets involved with benevolent storyline, but because the frisson that passes through her whilst actually reading that particular text is a strong and reliable harbinger of joyous, yet unrelated, events. These have included a paltry, yet welcoming, scratchcard windfall; a fortuitous meeting with a long-forgotten school pal; and some ill-deserved praise bestowed upon her by her cantankerous boss.

Another brief memoir cemented in my regard involves Lara’s entrance into, and subsequent appropriation of, the Doggone Champs dog show championship, location and exact date unknown. It came as much a surprise to Lara as it did to all that were present. This, she tells me, was because her rather ropey Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Napoleon, fought off heavyweight challenges from previous winners Gautam and his French Bulldog, Aurora, in addition to Dion with Blackler the Pekingese,. Why she remembers the opponents’ names and not the venue or timeframe of the occasion is a mystery. She had read The Mouse And The Valentine on the day before the event took place, however.

No one really knows where Lara came from. For instance, her historical tutelage pre-dating the age of twenty is hazy, at best. Some say she was expelled from every school she enrolled at because her flagrant fascination with fire extinguishers was incessant. Others insist that she was actually an exemplary student. They claim that, in her formative years, her burgeoning academic prowess was punctuated by a cavalcade of impressive fundraising activities throughout the local district, which she autonomously formulated and directed.

Her nationality is also a question of rabid debate. Her slight New Zealand drawl implies residency in Australasia at some point in time yet her ownership of various beguiling passports only exacerbates her anonymous guise. There have been theories that she was, in fact, born a native of the Southern Americas and brought East by an environmental politician known to her biological family. This would certainly explain her faint ochre pigmentation.

Somewhere along the line she arrived in London and when she did, she was not alone. Her sister was by her side. See, Lara is one of a pair of identical twins. A shared life of truly girly proportions. Between them, Lara and Talullah have demonstrated the implausible duality of womenkind. Her sister, for example, is one of the healthiest, curviest, and most dazzling of females. As a professional model, Talullah’s strut has transformed a thousand catwalks into works of exquisite art. The fettle of femininity has undoubtedly been kind to dear Talullah.

Lara, on the other hand, is not so blessed. Her appearance, although comely like her sibling, is predominantly clunky and uncouth. She cannot dress, she cannot dance and never has hair looked so uncomfortable on top of someone’s head. Regardless of the style, Lara’s mop constantly appears to be attempting an escape. Oddly, though, Lara has never been lacking in advances from either sex.

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