This month I’ve been reflecting on things that are important to me and there isn’t much that’s more important than friendship in my life.

Strangely we’ve developed a whole new circle of friends through Spurs - and that’s a weird thing in itself. I’m not sure that many real friendships are formed in the pub in the way we all met. I’m not sure that there are any other circumstances that would see such a diverse group of people set aside their geographical, employment and lifestyle differences and just embrace one another in the way that we all have. Of course I was great friends with Sarah before we met Olly, Bondy, Tom, Stacey, Al, all the Phils and all of the rest of the Bell and Hare crew but for both of us, becoming such a good group of friends with the rest was quite unexpected and a huge pleasure. It’s so good perhaps partly because of our different backgrounds.

DM has been spending more time with some of his oldest friends in recent times too. Gary K and Mike R have become regular visitors and I often come home from work to find Mike and David poring over some technical thing, a new photography technique or a scrumpy jack can with a pinhole in it.

I don’t get to see Sharon, Hugh, Colin and Claire anything like as often as I’d like unfortunately - we all spend our lives charging around doing ‘stuff’ but that doesn’t mean we’re less good friends. In fact, I think much of the truth of a good friendship is that even if you’ve not seen the person for a few months, you can pick up exactly where you left off without a second thought. I cherish those friendships so much.

My work friendships have become even more important to me since the summer, when I got a real scare, followed by a boost. Equally, some of my ex-colleagues and friends keep in touch through PBASE and other channels - Beth will remain my friend for life I’m sure.

We’ve also had a riot with our PBASE friends in NYC and at home. Two of the best fun weekends we’ve had this year were the New York trip and Ian’s visit to our house in May when we got together with Ray too. How cool is that - we started chatting on PBASE and now we are friends.

Our lives have been enriched in recent years through spending more time with Alan and Dee, who live about eight miles from us in Cornwall. A lucky coincidence for us as I’ve know Alan since he was sixteen and a YTS (youth training scheme) person working in my sister’s office. Jan and Alan are the closest friends I know. After many years of seeing virtually nothing of them myself, we started to pop in on them whenever we were here and gradually have built up a nice friendship of our own. What’s good is that we are equally happy and comfortable with both of them if you see what I mean. I can spend hours talking to Alan about something while DM and Dee are deep in conversation and equally, Dee and I can chat away while the boys are on the subject of motorbikes or whatever. That is quite rare really I think.

So, cheers to Alan and Dee, whose kitchen became my domain tonight as they couldn’t get a babysitter so we went there and I cooked them a meal as Dee isn’t a lover of cooking. I made sure it was a real Cornish meal and Alan gave me a great idea while we ate.….
I will be checking out the viability of it soon.