A long catch up face time with my old friend Singapore Sally was just what I needed to cheer me up after the email of doom and rejection dropped into my inbox. She always makes me feel better, and always has done.
Even if she was lying by a pool one degree north of the equator, and I was sitting on the sofa wearing my bent glasses, looking like Ronnie Barker when he was dressed as Nana Mouskouri.
When Mr C and I visited Sal in August 2016, I fell in love with that pool, surrounded by beautiful gardens, with hornbills resting in the trees above. Until Sally's husband told me that one of the gardeners had spotted a twelve foot python sunbathing on one of the loungers one morning. I wasn't always as keen after that.
This morning, I said I would love to go for a swim in that pool, and Sally said that she hadn't used it for a few months. And as I looked out into my own tiny Autumnal back garden, the only response I could muster was "yes, that's like me and my washing line". And we smiled and moaned a lot, and commiserated, and then she had to go and get ready to go to a cheese and wine party. And I had to go and get dressed before PopMaster started. Parallel lives!
We have always been complete opposites. She was sporty, good at Maths and Science. I was into more passive pursuits and better at English and History. She was small and slim, I was tall and curvy ( biggish really). But we found each other on our first day at secondary school, and that was it. We have only fallen out a handful of times - when she threw a netball at my face at point blank range and broke my nose, when I didn't say thank you for the squirrel trinket pot she bought me for my 14th birthday (I WAS horrible and I am sorry about that), and we didn't speak for a few weeks when she went to University, but I can't remember why.
We joined the school aged 13, moving into a class full of girls, many of whom had been friends since they were 4 years old. It was decided that I would be friends with another new girl who I had known vaguely at middle school. We tried to be friends, we even went to the cinema together in the Summer holidays before school started, in an attempt to bond, but that didn't go well. We went to see Rocky at the ABC in Northampton, but got the times wrong, so watched it from halfway through, and then sat all the way through the second showing so we could see what happened in the beginning, and then didn't want to disturb the people around us by leaving before the end. It wasn't even any good! And our friendship was similar. The modern day word to describe it would be meh.
Sally was encouraged to be friends with a nice girl who had lots of friends, but just not a special friend. And they became good friends, but there was just something magnetic (not in a weird way) that drew us together, and still does today. We have had some funny times, most of them when we were younger ended badly with streaming mascara and wet knickers. Her bladder was always weaker than mine, but I cannot imagine laughing so much that I wet myself now. Jumping on a trampoline yes, during a violent coughing fit yes, but not laughing. We must have been really funny.
She has always been encouraging, always supportive and always a good listener. Never judgemental, and just about the only person I can tell everything. I cannot imagine what I would do without her, but I do wish she lived next door, rather than across the world in a different time zone. Everyone needs a Sally and I miss mine a lot. She is a much better friend than I am, and I am eternally grateful. I love the Baz Luhrmann song 'Everybody's free to wear sunscreen', and often quote from it, even if only in my head. I find myself nodding all the way through it, because it is such great advice, but there is a bit that always makes me think of Sal -
'Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on, work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young'
I love it when she comes to visit, and I get to be naughty. Our kids shake their heads at us, and cannot believe that there is another woman who behaves in a similar way to their own mother. Apparently we say the same things, sing the same songs and behave very similarly. I don't understand why that should be a problem!
I can't wait for our trip to Sri Lanka. I am thinking I will be Hayley Mills and she will be Jane Seymour. Or maybe more Hinge and Bracket. When we went to Aya Napa for our 40th, we giggled at a couple of very elderly walnut skinned ladies in leopard print bikinis with perms and budgie blue eyeshadow and joked that they looked like the future us. Look out Sri Lanka is all I can say....
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