Friends

My son asked if I had any friends because he didn't know them.  Children don't always know their parents' friends, and I have sometimes wondered who were my grandparents' friends.  But children don't  know them, not only because they are absorbed in their own lives but also because they are physically in different places.  My friends were in the places where I grew up, where I went to school, college and worked, and I'm not in those places any more, and neither are they.  You lose touch.

Best friends, 1966 including Sheila, her sister, Cathy, and Anne.

Thank goodness for FriendsReunited some years ago.  Through that I found one of my very earliest friends (VEF), someone I knew when I was nine, and she now lives not far from me, a lovely intelligent woman, shy - the nuns battered any confidence out of her.  I made some good friends at that school, but not at my second secondary school because our family moved when I was around 14 and all the girls in the new school seemed to have paired up into best-friend relationships and there was nothing spare for me.

My best friend from my first secondary school came to live not far from me when our children were born.  We've kept in touch, but our sons don't remember playing together.  It didn't help that when I remarried I moved away so it was more difficult to keep in touch.  I made friends with other women through our children, playgroup and nursery school more than through primary school, and I missed them when I left.  When we meet, I know why they're friends because we talk for ages about things that are important to us.

Third year, 1966, including Madeleine, two Annes, Penny C and me.

A few weeks ago, a gliding-club friend contacted me to say that she'd finished her Open University degree and at last had time to spare, so we spent a day together catching up, comparing notes on work and life.  Her son went to the same university as my son, but they don't remembering playing together when they were little, and never had cause to meet again at uni.

Then there are the girl friends or play or have played tae kwon do.  I meet one who doesn't play any more for coffee occasionally.  Our latest point for comparison has been cancer treatment because she had breast cancer diagnosed a year after I did.  Another tae kwon do friend, who invited husband and I to her fiftieth birthday party, is a garden designer, and at the moment I have 40 of her plants nestling warmly in my greenhouse, ready to bloom we hope in time for her design display at Chelsea.

Recently, researching away from home for a couple of days, I stayed with an old college friend who lives in Worcestershire.  We had a wonderful time talking about, for example, books we've both read - Dervla Murphy's "To India on a Bicycle".   We don't see each other for decades and then meet twice in a year  - we met in summer last year for a mutual friend's sixtieth, when we sang and laughed as if we were still in college.

For my sixtieth birthday, I wanted to invite sixty girl friends but I ended up inviting men too.  I have a few men friends, not just husbands of girlfriends.  I have an old work friend who lives in America.  We'd lost touch but he's got such an unusual name that when I googled him (and his wife who has a different name) it was possible to get back in touch.  And he came and stayed with us for a night last year.  Many of the friends I've made in the last few years through my PhD are men, and several are from other countries: Canada, Ireland, Germany, China, India.  One PhD colleague who comes from Syria was very supportive and caring when I was diagnosed with cancer - his father had recently died of cancer.

And my best friend?  I asked my mother when I was around 14, so sad that I couldn't make friends in my new school, "Who's your best friend, Mum?"  She looked surprised that I didn't know.  "Why, your father of course!"  There you are - your best friend must be your spouse.

Icy spawn

So cold, went in garden, saw ice in pond, thought to photo it to compare with previous years, years when I could find frog spawn in ponds, would collect it and hope I'd get tadpoles.   Not this year.  Too cold to spawn.  I thought.

But my tadpoles last year must have grown into frogs when I wasn't looking, because amongst the ice I saw spawn in the pond, my pond!  Hope springs.