Look me in the eye and say it's wrong

Five years ago, I took what was, for me, an unprecedented step and arranged to meet up with a group of people I only knew through an internet forum. That day, the Northern Division, or ND, was born, though it was a few days before the name was coined.

We weren’t all there at the beginning, some came along later. But somewhere in that wonderfully crazy Autumn and Winter of Christmas light switch-ons, road trips, radio tours, signings and dodgy nightclubs, a bond was formed. Despite what we said at the time, it wasn’t ‘all about the music’, and it quickly became about us.

This weekend was our anniversary, and there seemed no better place to celebrate it than Whitby, for who can forget such things as waterlogged campsites (and tents), getting barred from the Dolphin, the freezing gale that blew as we waited to get into Whitby Pavilion, the crazy golf, watching football in the freezing cold till Cat’s fingers turned blue, the 199 steps, the photograph in the window… It was a weekend for memories, for sadness, but also for celebration.

In those first few heady months, these people became closer than family. I know that on Saturday, there was no one I would rather have been with. The ND – it really is a state of mind, and we’re stronger together. I love you all to bits.*

*yes, even those who scared the cats.