Most of my memories of John-Luke involve music in one way or another. It’s been a major part of our life together, even if we haven’t always liked the exact same things. My musical taste is not as wide as John-Luke’s, and he was always trying to get me to expand my horizons. I was always hoping to find some new music I could introduce him to rather than the other way around - that did happen, but more rarely. But it was so fun to find those shared things that we both loved. We always had music on, in the car, while we were cooking, playing board games… and we’d always sing and dance along. Some of our favourite songs to dance to while cooking are on the playlist from the remembrance party, including the Rasputin remix which we’d listen to on repeat! We’ve been to so many gigs over the decades, and many a happy evening was spent playing Rock Band, either just us two or with family and friends. We loved watching Eurovision together, and John-Luke bought the CD every year of all the entries, taking very seriously the task of listening through them to pick out his favourites. He loved to hear the different styles of music from around Europe and he found some of his favourite songs of all time through Eurovision. No doubt I’ve got them wrong but I’ve put together the list of some of his favourites as best I can remember!

The songs that really remind me of John-Luke, and of the two of you having fun together, are:

Abba's Gimme, Gimme, Gimme: I remember the two of you being so super coordinated and cool dancing to this at the Abba tribute band (Bjorn Again I think?) at Keele that the three of us went to. I didn't know the moves so you taught me the chorus choreography and whenever I hear it I think of you both.

Encore Une Fois by Sash!: that night we persistently harassed XFM whilst we were partying at your house was so much fun and one of my best memories. And the silly dances we did to this song were great (shooting, skiing etc)!

Battleflag by the Lo Fidelity Allstars: whenever this song came on, John-Luke couldn't help but dance. It's got a super funky vibe to it and he'd throw shapes to it. It's a great song and will forever remind me of him being his fun, carefree self.

U16 Girls by Travis: this one (along with Popscene by Blur) always transports me right back to the Patch. John-Luke and Joe or Kieran would be shooting pool and we'd be bobbing around to this and blaring out the chorus at the top of our lungs.

I can’t remember the specific song, but I know when we were out in Swindon one night, we were all getting a bit drunk and silly. John-Luke was clearly noticing how drunk I was getting, so he guided me towards the door to get a taxi home. However a 90s dance song started and I wanted to dance to it on the dancefloor, so JL was laughing and still dragging me off to get a taxi, making sure I got back safely.

In our uni shared house, John-Luke’s room was the hub for gaming and generally hanging out. There were endless games of Crash team racing to the sound track of an 80s disco CD. The boys would regularly listen to other new music discovered in HMV. I would often be heading out for a nursing shift at 6 am to find the boys still gaming!!!!

The compilation albums that we made for each other over the years meant a great deal to me. I will always cherish memories of dancing with him to cheesy pop songs on nights out at uni.

John-Luke's sense of fun was brilliantly infectious with his love of Eurovision and the brilliant fancy dress parties we had with him and Ellen (especially the time Ellen represented Ukraine and amazingly managed to dress and look EXACTLY like the Ukrainian points announcer at the end!) They were some of the best nights we were lucky enough to have in his company. We loved our Saturday nights at King William St playing Wii games and rock band (John-Luke was amazing at all the instruments showing us all up - and even not bad at the singing)! Unfortunately the name of our gaming band is too rude to mention publicly.