A happy littering of serendipity has befallen me lately. This year so far I am back in touch with at least four people that I haven’t spoken to in years, and it’s been truly lovely to catch up on all the news and latest plans for cars/babies/extensions/holidays/hair do’s, and another opportunity to extend my straw poll on whether I should attend ‘Strictly Live’ next year. Lucy told me it straight; ‘Men doing latin’.
Incidentally, happy anniversary Lucy and Charlie for next week, wishing you many more.
Old friendships being rekindled has also got me thinking about all of the people who contribute to my bubble. Indeed I am the sort of girl who has never found herself as part of an enduring group, rather I have formed alliances over the years with all sorts of different people where our lives have crossed paths. My old Guide leader, a naval colleague who is currently transporting my reindeer slippers around the world, and the daughter of a vicar who moved to Reading – who knew a friend in university halls – that went to school with my ex-boyfriend, are amongst these treasured people. And I love it. I love that the history of my friendships often have no interconnection with any others, but when we all get together on occasions, we all get on famously. I love that when I see my friends, the variable mixture of personalities leads to us doing different things, talking about different things, and invariably learning different things. This feeds me like nothing else does and I am fast learning that whereas abandoning dairy and chocolate has been possible (bar that one after eight that would have gone off), a life without the company of these people is not. You see therefore the return of four more makes me inordinately happy.
Cheesy, but this is so.
I would also like to take this opportunity to pay my dues to the Poppet who sent me the card above. In it she reminds me that ‘Life can be hard, but it has many rewards, and the cherry on the hypothetical cupcake (we eat a lot of cake), is the time spent with friends’.
I thank her for many things, particularly for understanding my most recent predicament of being a stalk. I can only hope that she is one day rewarded with her Mother-in-Law understanding that a carnation and chrysanthemum combo is no longer socially acceptable.