I’m dying to know what you make of this. So, flicking through last week’s Guardian Weekend I read a feature on habits we can fall into with our friends. Great! I thought, because while articles appear regularly on parenting hacks, or how to jazz up your romantic life, less is written on the topic of friendships. But one particular suggestion took not just the biscuit, but the entire box of Fox’s Festive Favourites. Instead of meeting for brunch, says the author of The Radical Potential of Female Friendship, owhy not meet for a workout instead (ok…potentially) or wait for it, fill out your tax return together.
Can you imagine! ‘Hi Karen, listen, forget the huevos rotos in General Merchants this week. Yep, that’s right, no extra hot latte for you. You’re coming to mine; I’ll put on a brew, and we’ll nail those self-assessments forms.’ Well, I know what Karen would say: friendship terminated-don’t let the door hit you on the way out. And she’d be quite right too. I mean, go for a walk, visit a museum, head to the cinema. But a tax return? That’s deadly! Another idea was to do the weekly shop together. Are you having a laugh? I have the concentration span of a praying mantis. I can barely get round Sainsbury’s to pick up all the ingredients for dinner, never mind make it a social event.
But aside from these two appalling suggestions, others resonated with me because I’d discussed some of the issuess with my friends recently.
‘PLEASE can we go to more gigs this year?’ said Aisling. How we used to love a frolic. Twenty years ago we’d have been tearing up the dancefloor in Auntie Annie’s to the Stone Roses and The White Stripes. The release of a Saturday night dance after a week of teaching practice was not to be underestimated. But if we went to a club now we’d feel about seventy-two, and sure we wouldn’t know any of the tunes. A decent gig would be more like it, with the benefit that they start earlier and we could be home and in bed by eleven. Thus we plan to scour the listings and get booking. #decentnewyearresolutions
Something nice happened last year when I decided to take a risk…
Last February we were going to London and on a whim, I decided to contact two friends I had lived with on my year abroad. I hadn’t seen either for years and I was nervous about initiating a meet up. But was I glad I tentatively sent off those texts? You bet. I met Mary for lunch in Elliot’s on Borough Market while I despatched the family off to the Harry Potter Studio Tour. We had glasses of chilled red wine and ate cheese puffs and marvelled at our new ‘grown-up’ status. ‘How is it possible that we’re married now? That we have mortgages? Children?’ we mused. The years literally melted away and we could have been flatmates again, in our funny little apartnent above a sex shop* on the Rue du Four a Chaux on Reunion Island. ‘Can we do this again?’ I asked as we hugged goodbye in Blackfriars Station. Abso-bloodly-lutely, she said.
The following day we headed to Richmond to stay with my other old flatmate, Emily. Initially I had said NO WAY when she’d invited us, because four days when we hadn’t met in over a decade felt like an imposition. So we compromised on a two night stay and planned a trip to the zoo with the kids and I booked Plaza Suite in the Savoy Theatre for us both by way of a thank you. It was a joy. Tom, who’s another one of those long-suffering husbands, opened a bottle of bubbly on our arrival, which we sipped with a rich chocolate cake which Em and her daughter had made because it was LSB’s birthday. They’d even dug out a bottle of the rum we used to drink on Reunion Island over which we toasted our reunion. We regretted this over-exuberance as we stood in front of the elephant enclosure in the mizzly rain the following afternoon. (Elephants do have their own quite distinctive odour, do they not?) That night, LSB took all four kids back to Emily’s on the train while we sought sustenance in a cosy bistro in the West End before the play. ‘What made you agree so readily to have us over?’ I asked, over a restorative plate of samosas. ‘Because I need more fun in my life,’ she replied. Isn’t that just the nicest thing you’ve ever heard? It transpired that a friend of hers had interviewed an aging TV director who was still working despite being in his eighties. He said what kept him young was a conscious decision to have ‘deliberate fun.’ Deliberate fun; I like that. Such is the daily grind that I think we could all do with a bit of this, but it doesn’t happen on its own: it takes planning, risks, perseverance. But worth it in the end, I think.
Sometimes taking a chance is the only way if you want to see the people you care about. On Monday I messaged some girls and asked if they fancied going to Idyll on the Ormeau Road at the weekend. I didn’t expect anyone to be free, but miraculously, five of us sat down to a meal last night, and madder still, most of us drove, which left us sprightly enough to pursue our respective pursuits this morning. I managed a run in Belvoir Forest which I definitely wouldn’t have managed if I’d necked half a bottle of Malbec.
In essence, effort is required to keep friendships going. It’s too easy to do the same old things, and sit round the dinner table rehashing the same tired subjects. (Can I put my hand up and say that I bore the absolute bastard out of myself doing this so God knows how my poor friends feel.) So make plans, have craic, and seize the day. But for the love of God, do NOT suggest filling in a tax return.
*It was quite a large first floor apartment and below were three shop units: one which sold climbing gear, another was a pet store and then the aforementioned sex shop. I was only in the latter once, to borrow some chairs for a party we were hosting. Incidentally, our landlord lived next door to us and he was a Hindu priest. His wife, a lovely woman, used to bring us home made rougail, which was a pickle made from green mangoes and evil little birds’ eye chillis. Merely opening the jar was enough to singe your nostril hair. My eyes still water thinking about it.
