Reunited

Thank you so much for all those supportive comments and for the emails (which I am gradually answering; apologies if I haven't responded to all of them yet. I will . . . )

I took Easter gently; there were guest dogs here on Friday, Saturday and Monday, but Sunday was free and I drove across Exmoor to have lunch with my Dear Old School Friend, who was staying with her family in Ilfracombe, on the North Devon coast.

The weather was glorious: windy, but glorious. Isn't the sight of the sea on a fine day one of life's great pleasures?

 

The Victorians 'discovered' Ilfracombe and put it firmly on the British holidaymakers' map. In the 21st century, Damien Hirst arrived, opened a restaurant, and Ilfracombe started reinventing itself all over again. Not sure if it's there yet but, heck, a day at the seaside is a day at the seaside.

Time was when we would have thought nothing of running up this cliff to the flagpole at the top: 

 

but we settled instead for an appropriately nostalgic 1960s sort of lunch of risotto, followed by Italian ice cream.

In the course of packing, unpacking, and repacking ad infinitum last year, I'd come across the letter my DOSF wrote to me the day my daughter was born. Ten months later, she became a mother for the first time herself. I took the letter with me and reunited it with its writer for the first time in, well, a very long time.

"We were so young," we sighed. And we were. But there was no doubting the strength of the friendship illustrated by that letter. It was all there, in every line and every word. And, almost 51 years since we first met, on our first day as convent schoolgirls, that bond is just as strong.

The 74-mile round trip may be as much as I can manage in my current crock-like state but seeing my oldest friend was absolutely worth the effort. No question about it.

Comments

[colleen]

You are absolutely right about a trip to the seaside - and the reviving qualities of spending time with an old friend that you love.

Must get back to Ilfracombe one day.

[Jay]

That sounds like such a lovely day out! Yes, I agree about the sea, there's something about it that really invigorates and refreshes the soul, isn't there?

And good friends do, too. ;)