It never fails to amaze me when I meet up with really old friends just how easily the intervening years are stripped away and once again we're reduced to the giggling girls we were when we trained together more than thirty years ago (and boy are there some tales to tell from those days - but I digress). I was all of sixteen when I first met these particular old friends and fresh out of school. So fresh in fact that I'd had my last exam on the Friday and had started work the following Monday, I couldn’t be any ‘fresher’ lol! Pam and Christine were both older & wiser than I and had definitely seen more of life than I had, no slur on them I was just so innocent or was it naive, probably both. We worked in a completely female environment and although you could get the inevitable nastiness that so often happens in these cases, it was here that friendships were formed that became an intrinsic part of your life and that would truly stand the test of time.
Friendships that saw folk marry, have children, divorce. Friendships that saw Christmas parties, trips to Blackpool and Alton Towers. Friendships that experienced promotions AND redundancy and finally; friendships that saw folk from the wider group sadly pass away. Gradually over the years people move on, and I was perhaps one of the first to go. Our lives each going in very different directions and yet somehow never being THAT different to each others, but this you only realised when you finally manage to get back together.
We've not been brilliant at keeping in touch, we've met up perhaps a handful of times over the years and more frequently very recently. The thing that strikes me most each time is that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how long since the last time. It doesn't matter that as one of us approaches 50, another is approaching 60 whilst the third (somewhere in between) has had both hips replaced! None of it matters and all of that giggling years ago, well, it could have been just yesterday. What truly wonderful gifts friendships are.
Thanks for dropping by and please feel free to leave me a comment if you’d like.
Disclaimer, this wonderful photo taken from Pinterest in no way is intended to represent anyone mentioned within this post lol, not yet anyway.
Wendy xx
4 comments:
A lovely piece of writing,Wendy.....and so,so true.
I so agree, Wendy...It's great to meet with old friends and just pick up where you left off!!
Alison xx
A friend and I were just talking about this the other day - we intend to have as much fun in retirement as we used to have in the Sixth Form Study Room!
So true - I've a friend, my best friend who I met in college 14 years ago, and we can just pick up the phone or have a visit and it's like we saw each other yesterday.
Post a Comment