Tuesday 31.3.09

A day of nostalgia chatting to S on Facebook. We bonded over Cornwall County Council's music fro primary schools programme (we both played the flute) in 1978. She was my best friend outside of school from 1979 to 1983. We would meet up at the school gates and walk back to her house where her Mum would serve domestic normality and home made coffee cake. Best cake I ever tasted. Ever, ever, ever. Puberty and the early teens. Orangey-gold makeup and green hair gel, and newfangled mousse. Clothes, but not so many, more the dream of fashion. Boys found out about through gossip and two inch novels by Jackie Collins, pages with the sex scenes folded over. Singing along to Meatloaf (we both still know the words). Impressing each other and egging each other on. Venturing out to the Radio One Roadshow, and missing the bus back from the beach.

We were still friends when she introduced me to Nick in 1984, although growing apart by then, I was at a different school, she had made different friends. I still loved her though for her easy cheerfulness, her confidence around the boys that swarmed around her, her glow of self. Of course, the boys, college for her and sixth form for me, and both of us moving out of Truro finished it. So the rest was marriage, children, love and the history of my life. She came to our wedding reception in 1988, just the same as ever, then we lost touch.

We re-established contact last year, but it was a bit awkward, I think because on my side, I disclosed too much stridently, too soon. On her side, she sent me Facebook Faeries. But, when we get to chatting back and forth as we have today, its fine. I really would like to meet up with her again, and with K, another friend who was my best friend at school. K who let me copy her in maths, who introduced me by proxy to the concept of serious injury, who had a sense of fairness and giving everyone the chance, and who, as it turns out is more sentimental about me than I deserve.

So, today, between my efforts to write something funny, ferry an over-stressed Nick to meetings, and to make a fair enough fish pie, I've thought of my old friends. I thought of how they shaped me, and what I learned from them. It made it a good day.

Just as a follow-up to my recent despair at the rancid plot lines of Holby City, today's was a corking episode. My children talked through it, naturally, but you can't have everything.