FRAHM is Part of A Much Bigger 30 Year Story

The image above is of the family photos by my desk. The faded one is Emmalou & I kissing in Wythenshaw Park, just after we moved in together in the summer of 1997. It's in the same scratched crappy little frame we bought back then.

 

FRAHM is a family business. That doesn't simply mean family works here. It's part of who we are. There are unseen peaks and troughs that we have experienced together, that I try to share with you honestly.

 

Yes it funds us, but it's also part of 30 years of a complex relationship between my wife Emmalou and I. A reflection of our passions, interests, losses, wins, hopes, fears and drive. 

 

FRAHM isn't us, but it is part of us. FRAHM is made with love, because we, Emmalou & I, are in love, believe in love and want to protect that outlook. FRAHM is something we're proud of, something we created, that is getting better every day, but was created through sacrifice and hardship.

 

FRAHM is part of our story. This is OUR story:

 

It’s our 30th anniversary today. Emmalou and I first snogged at Dave Haslam’s funk night in Manchester, Yellow on my birthday in 1996. 

“Heh, I noticed you staring at me, with daggers, all night” I said, finally full of enough Dutch Courage to make a pass at the woman I’d been obsessing over for two weeks. “My god she is gorgeous, I may never see her again.” I said to myself. 

I was finally more scared of regret than rejection. Thank god.

“Yea, you were really sarcastic to me the other day in the pub”, the beautiful woman (was she called Emma, Mary-Lou, Emmawooodles?? I couldn’t remember.)

“Oh god yea, sorry, that’s my way of flirting. I’m terrible at it.” Honesty is the best policy.

“You were flirting with me??” Suddenly her eyes went from lasers to fluttering butterflies.

I needed to act. “What about a cheesy line instead? Do I get a birthday kiss?”

I am told that our faces remained attached to each other’s for the next two hours, until the club closed.

MAGIC. A life changing moment from a clunky encounter between two kindred spirits who didn’t know that yet. 

Madness to think we’re still together 30 years later, with two kids and memories of what feels like ten lives lived. Memories as extraordinary as sitting on a remote island beach off Madagascar looking at a thick stripe of Milky Way, or horrific as watching piles of congealed blood falling out of my fading wife, running through corridors to find a surgeon to save her and my unborn son.

I can’t begin to tell what we’ve been through. I don’t want to. Our partnership started with my jaw dropping at the sight of a woman in long velvet coat and ends with, well, let’s not get into that. 

That part of the story is yet to be told. I try not to fear it. But it must end. Physics always wins.

Back to June the 14th 1996. 

Ten days earlier my friend Stephen pointed out a girl in the corner of the Irish pub I helped him run for extra spending money. I was twenty two years old, running a club in central Manchester, part of a clubbing cognoscenti, a bit of a local ‘face’ and having a lot of fun, but feeling, always, rather lonely. She, I would find out ten days hence, had just turned twenty, in the second year of a music production degree.

Stephen said “check out that student in the corner”. Emmalou was stood wearing a black velvet coat with a Vic Reeves Big Night Out badge on it. I gasped. I remember audibly gasping. 

She was perfect. To me. For me. I will never forget. I could paint that image perfectly from memory - if I could paint. That is perhaps the most important moment of my life. “Thunderbolt” as they say In Four Weddings & A Funeral.

I don’t believe in love at first sight. How can you love someone you don’t know? But I do believe in attraction at first sight. That badge and unusual coat said to me “Confident, independent, funny woman”. Exactly my type. 

She also had incredibly long strawberry blonde hair, freckles and heavy black eye makeup, which, altogether was making my head scream SHE IS A GODDESS.

She still is. I am sad that maybe she doesn’t think she’s a goddess. That age and the menopause has taken that away. Not a bit of it. She is as gorgeous, if not more so, than ever. But she does know I worship her. I tell her constantly, to the point of mawkishness.

Now aged 50, her hair is half the length, we now have Vic Reeves’ (well, Jim Moir, same chap) art on our walls and I still wibble when her freckles come out in Summer. Always have. I don’t think I can ever express to her how much I adore her.

Where does that love come from? At first, lust, of course. But always respect. Not simply the respect all people should be afforded. The respect of equals. To a woman I didn’t fully understand, who challenged me, who I was a bit scared of and intrigued by. Still am.

Then, we bonded through shared interests. Music - at that time a lot of Radiohead & A Tribe Called Quest. 

Film - our first cinema trip was to see From Dusk Till Dawn. She didn’t mind that I made an involuntary primal ‘man grunt’ when Salma Hayek appeared, and she guessed every single flavour of Revel that I pulled out the bag. I thought she was a witch. Now I know she just has an absolutely amazing sense of smell. She still tastes the wine in restaurants, even though I have the wine merchant qualifications.

And clothes. She was happy I wore lurid vintage basketball shirts with huge orange jeans and wacky sneakers. I was terrified and impressed at the fuck-you confidence to walk around Manchester city centre in athletic gear and platform shoes to go grocery shopping.

Two months later we said we loved each other by a river bank in rural Lancashire, where she grew up. I had come to meet her parents - Bob, a singer, who left us 15 years ago; and Leonie, who had Emmalou with Bob as a teenager, still works for FRAHM and still makes better roast potatoes than anyone.

Pink, her parent’s Jack Russell Terrier, was fetching stones as we lay in the thick August grass. I cried. I often cry. She didn’t seem to mind that then. My kids are still getting used to it now.

If we’d met six months earlier, I’d never have made a move and she would have ignored me. In June 1996 I finally glowed with the easy smiling comfort of someone who was (finally, though temporarily) happy in their own skin.

Back in January I had just split up with my first long term girlfriend. I was lost, as usual. I’m needy. I need affection. But affection and love are different things. She was one of a long line of toxic relationships or one night stands. I went for the girl I could look after, not for a woman I could look up to. Or the one I woke up with, nursing a horrific hangover. I hated that period.

To find that easygoing change in my attitude I had to respect myself and see myself as worthy of love. That, weirdly, came at the end of a revolver pointed at my forehead in 1996. It is a long and extraordinary story, the crux of which is I stood up to the gangster in question. 

My whole internal view changed. I did something brave. I decided, literally, verbally, overtly, I was not going to be the victim anymore. That life was what I made it. I wasn’t my childhood traumas and regrets, or what I had failed at previously. I was what I did next.

Then I met the love of my life. Because I finally thought I deserved to. And here we are.

Thirty years together is a lot. It hasn’t always been easy. No relationship is.

We trust each other. Trust is the cornerstone. So hard to build. So easy to destroy. Same with FRAHM actually. Trust is my calling card. I don’t cheat, I don’t lie and I don’t gossip. I am of course an absolute nightmare in all other regards…

A very mature, switched on, go-getting Emmalou met, fell in love with, and was driven crazy with frustration by a man-boy with unresolved issues, alongside undiagnosed ADHD autism (it took twenty six years of our relationship before that was clear).

She saved my life. She helped drag a suicidal, self hating (my self-love of 1996 wasn’t always how I felt), waster out of the mire a few times. She would listen but also do practical things like stand over me, make me put on my cycling clothing and put me on my bike, because I was never unhappy when I was riding.

So much we’ve been through. The terror of debt - a huge red button for two people who grew up around money worries. The horrible conversation that we had to sell our beloved first house in Bath and move to a shoebox, so we didn’t go bankrupt. That pragmatic necessary decision meant we could start FRAHM.

The years of me looking after the kids while she worked 3 jobs, 15 hour days. The years of me running FRAHM unpaid. The years of us being so tired you’re not living, just existing. Waving at each other as we passed.

We’ve always been pragmatic, straight talking, doers. Those decisions started with painful truths where we shouted and screamed out our pain and frustration at each other. We are shouters. We try not to, but we do more than many. 

Repressed feelings never get any better. We believe anger needs an outlet. But there must come the really honest, uncomfortable chat afterwards. No resentments left unsaid. And there will be resentments. We are not the same person. We are not perfect. I’d hate it if we were.

Emmalou nearly left me about ten years go. She told me later. I knew. I didn’t blame her. I had lost my way, obsessed by my first business, hyper-focussed on my over-arching ambition. That’s why so many entrepreneurs are divorced, or single. The relationship gets in the way, or they simply forgot it needs constant maintenance. They weren’t there.

Amongst all the affection, fancying each other (I still can’t believe my dream woman fancies me) and shared interests, what has kept us together as well is the knowledge that it can fail. 

We’ve known throughout that thirty years together (nineteen married) that relationships break down. That they always need work. A ring on a finger doesn’t mean you can give up, job done.

That there will be ups (such joy!) and downs (the horrors we have witnessed and somehow got through). That most of it is drudge. Hard work, folding laundry, clearing drains, reading homebuyers survey reports and telling your kids to clean their FEEEEECKKKING teeth for the umpteenth time.

Why am I saying all this? Mainly, because I want to honour my beloved. For her to know, even though we’ve said this together and I tell her all the time, how much I love, adore and respect her. That I remember the hurt and pain. I know it wasn’t, isn’t and never will be easy or perfect. That I’ve hurt her, and her me. 

And I want you to know that I know this love, any love, is rare and precious. If you find it, protect it. If you lose, you will find it again. It won't be easy but it will be worth it. Never forget that.

It is an extraordinary moment of luck that Emmalou and I met, and somehow ended up together, then staying together, so young. We don’t believe in fate or God’s Hand. That is pure luck, turned, through constant work, into something earned. But it can still go wrong.

You may be divorced. Your partner may have died. You may feel alone, even together. You may never have fallen in love. You may have given up hope. You may think you don’t even care.

But, from my supposed lofty position, I declare that LOVE IS THE REASON. Love yourself. Love your neighbour. Love another. 

Accept yourself in all your glory, idiocy and imperfection. Now find, accept and embrace love.

Love is scary. It leaves you vulnerable to attack. You may get attacked. You may lose. You may have to leave. They may have to leave you. It is still worth the pain.

If you have it, work to keep it. Declare it. Write shit poetry about that person. Give it to them.

If you don’t have love, strive for it. Work on yourself. Be more lovable. Be more vulnerable. More honest. More yourself, bettered. Never stop trying. 

If you lost it, I’m sorry. You had it. Remember it. Treasure it. The pain confirms those joyous bonds existed. A new love can be found again, but that pain will never fully leave you. It’s still worth it. Pain is the loss of something worth having.

Love is the answer. It always was. It always will be.

Thank you Emmalou for loving me. I love you. You’re all I ever wanted and ever needed.

Now I’ve gone and made myself cry. Again.

Nick