I have just been reliving my childhood. The best bits, the giggly bits, the frozen chocolate mousse round the mush bits. My oldest friend (not as in aged, but as in I've known her longer than any other friend) came to the farm for the first time and spent the weekend here. It was grey and it rained, but we chirped and chirruped and chortled and chatted and totally reverted to the girls we once were. The old nick names and fish-lips face contortions were greedily adopted and enjoyed again and luckily this time I refrained from wetting my pants under the duress of hysterical laughter plus full bladder combo.There is nothing quite like a large chunk of shared history, a time when we felt that we were more important to each other than our parents were (or at least we felt that to be the case much of the time, with parents being the voice who should be obeyed/disobeyed according to whim and circumstance). Because I see my friend only every couple of years and speak infrequently, I can forget in between how deep the feelings go and how key our friendship was through childhood and the teenage years. Our lives might be in huge contrast now, but for me, the most significant thing remains: that after a little while together the shorthand of years of knowledge kicks in and we don't have to explain or embellish. Ordinarily I laugh a lot but I don't think I have giggled quite so joyously and freely and in such an unencumbered fashion for a long time - I gurgled like a child and that is something I loved then and treasure now.
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12 comments:
Yes, my oldest friend - we met aged 4 at school - and she has lived in Australia for nearly 30 years now so we rarely see each other, but it's wonderful to catch up. Just more and more to catch up on...
That's sweet - the ancient friendships never die.
Fab! We all need to laugh like that sometimes.
Please can I have your clafloutis (sp?)recipe - I have been and picked another load...
Isn't it good to have someone who knew you as a carefree young tot FPot?
Thank you Sir James - hopefully not too sickly tho.
M&M - clafoutis recipe now sits richly on your blog - let me know if you made it and if you liked it.
I'm so glad you had such a lovely giggly girlie time. Sounds lovely. i hope to do the same in October when a friend flies down from 'oop north' for long weekend.
Heartwarming!
Hello Lady Thinker - you have changed your name as well as added that lovely image?
Eurowoof - thank you!
Lovely to wallow in such friendship, even secondhand!
And thanks for the clafoutis recipe which I stole from your comment on M&M's blog! Sounds magnificent, and I'm going blackberrying this weekend!
Yes - well spotted - I changed my name x2 - some people thought I was a man and my blog not what they were expecting!
Rob - hope you enjoy it - leave plenty of room too - it is v filling!
Lady Thinker - you have me intrigued - what on earth were they expecting?
I haven't managed to maintain many childhood friendships, so I don't have experiences quite comparable to this, but at the weekend I returned to my home home for a family wedding and found myself surrounded by familiar and poignant landmarks. I wandered through a once-favourite neighbourhood and lingered on the doorsteps of people long gone, gazing at houses and reliving memories. I knocked on one door, pretty sure that the family were still there. They were, and I was invited in to a place I spent a lot of time in as a teenager and am still very find of. Stories of people and jobs and marriages and babies were swapped, and it was really enjoyable.
Welcome Clare. I haven't yet amassed adequate pencils to have a go at breaking or missing by a lead length your intriguing statistic. This may be because there aren't many pencils in the house rather than the possibility that I will need many handfuls of same. However, I can stack most things in my cleavage without fear of loss.
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