Friends Reunited

The friendships which I write about in The Faery Tales stories, especially those between Rosie, Billie, Sally and the gang, are very much based on my own experiences of childhood and the circle of friends I grew up with. I was totally blessed throughout my school years to have an array of like-minded people around, who shared my craziness, giddiness, mischief, imagination and thirst for adventure. We got up to allsorts and I have so many precious memories of our time together which I record through my stories, poems and songs. Sadly however, the reality of life is that we don’t always stay connected to the friends we grew up with. College, university and eventually a career, force people apart, sometimes to complete opposite ends of the world, and you inevitably lose touch with those you once held dear. When I was younger we didn’t have the social media at our fingertips like we do today – OK, enough of the jokes! I’m not THAT old!! – but Facebook on your phone at the touch of a button has totally changed the friendship universe. I remember my two best friends moving away to Blackpool to study. I felt like my arm had been cut off without them. Every few weeks they would send me a postcard – via the real-life postal service with an actual stamp!! – writing about what they were up to and letting me know they were doing just fine. Nowadays I’d obvs just be getting hourly Snapchats of them up the Blackpool Tower or hanging off a sandy donkey, LOL. Anyway, for the above reasons, I totally lost all contact with one of my BFFs. Like me, she was always one to follow her big shiny dreams, and had left the small village we grew up in pretty hastily. We dropped each other occasional lines when she’d moved to Melbourne, Australia, but I hadn’t actually seen her in the flesh for a whole 20 years!! OMG! When she let me know that she was flying home to the UK for Christmas, I jumped at the chance of a very long overdue reunion. We joked that it was going to be like an old episode of Cilla Black’s ‘Surprise Surprise’ and they should televise it, but it truly was a special teary moment. When she walked down the street towards me in her Versace shades, clutching a beautiful Burberry handbag, my heart did a double flip. We were still kindred spirits, still peas in a pod, and I fell in love with her all over again. We sipped glasses of rose` in the private booth of a Sheffield wine bar, and reminisced endlessly about our escapades of days gone by. We laughed so much it hurt over hilarious diary entries and albums of old photographs – obvs taken a little before we had discovered the true meaning of fashion. (And to think I thought I was Style Queen at that time! Luckily Carrie Bradshaw came along and saved me soon after!) We brought each other up to speed with the past two decades-worth of our lives, and in just a few hours she seemed to have set any of my spurious problems or silly boy issues to rest. What a girl! Of course we’ve said that we’ll stay in touch, and I really do believe that we will this time. As I said, the world has changed, and we can Skype and Whatsapp to our heart’s content. The moral of this story is though, that people come into our lives and go out again. People pass through the pages of your book and leave their mark, sometimes good, sometimes bad. But there is absolutely no replacement for a good friend. And you know you have found one when 20 years can turn and you still feel the same! Friends are our choices. We have total freedom in selecting them. Some people in your life, you have no say over, but no one can force you into being friends with someone. Enjoy making those decisions and treasure them. And don’t get too jealous over their Burberry handbag. Certainly don’t steal it! That of course never crossed my mind!!!