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Corinne


On the final day of design week I found you stood outside, hunched over and useless with laughter. Kitty was next to you as your hysterical reflection, the symmetry broken only by her hand as a sign of support on your shoulder. I knew the moment was yours and Kitty’s to share so I took a picture and slipped back inside unnoticed. Hearing you laugh was a source of strength that stayed with me for the rest of the day, and it followed me wherever I went: it helped me make the curved ridge board while Amos was making the trusses for our model, it lent a hand in beating Canadian Chris in an arm wrestle at the Boswell Arms as we celebrated that evening, and it told me to throw water on our beautiful model tower when Eric set fire to it when we got back. 

I wanted to know the source of your laughter but that desire sat on a perfectly balanced set of scales with the need not to know on the other side. I ascribed a personality to each of them.  I imagined that those two needs were best of friends - happy, chatty, relaxed in compromise.  I hear them echoing the same sentiment back and forth to each other: sometimes there is a power in the not-knowing, sometimes there is a power in the not-knowing, sometimes there is a power in the not-knowing. The tears that fell from your cheeks that morning have now been washed away by the Scottish rain, but the inherent musicality and goodness of laughter that is honest and true is such that its memory cannot - and will not - diminish with time.

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