Know who your friends are
I had occasion recently to look through a bunch of old photos. Being as I am (according to my young children) a citizen of ancient vintage, I am of course talking about those old fashioned paper photos you’ve probably seen on display in museums. There was one photo, gosh I look like I was having such a wonderful time, grinning and looking affectionately around at the group of lovely faces surrounding me. Such a good time is being had. The family member looking over my shoulder paused on the way past and commented on how nice it was that I had found a photo of some old friends. Which it would have been… had I recognised a single other person in the photograph.
As a kid, I think I imagined I’d have the same friends my whole life, but actually, a more accurate depiction of the life I was living at that particular time when that particular photo was taken would have been just me and a pile of books. That’s not meant to be sad. I know if it were a movie it would be the lonely opening scene and over the next 90 minutes I would let myself go and finally connect with the people round me, but to me at the time, in my real actual life, it was exactly what I needed and entirely wonderful in every way. In fact, looking back now, now that I don’t have much time for the books that sustained me so well back then, I realise how much I miss them.
Public Service Announcement: sometimes the comfort of old friends is a wonderful thing, and sometimes those friends aren’t people.
The power of old books should not be underestimated. They smell superb, they contain engaging characters, great conversations and beautiful vistas - and if you’ve read them before, you even know the ending isn’t going to enrage you. Sometimes, at someone’s house, or a library, or a bookshop, the act of recognising a familiar book on a bookshelf can make a person smile to nobody.
Old music is the same. The right song is like a time travel device. I went on a run recently - belted through the streets like a hero to the pounding music of my youth - a local hero winning against the odds. When I came home I switched to some more relaxed tunes and oh! No! There I was, still puffing slightly from my run, frozen in the middle of the lounge room. How the algorithm knew what song would move me at that precise moment, I don’t want to know, but I stood, quietly, forehead against the glass, and listened to every note, watching the birds out the window, and music, my very good friend, was there for me when I needed it.
You know what it’s nice to revisit from the past? Latent skills. I have recently rediscovered my old friend colouring-in. Not those deliberately meditative grown-up colouring books, but big kids’ ones that require acres of colouring, meadows of it, drifting in a breeze of my own making, the smell of pencils reminding me of what? Childhood? School? A parent? While colouring in those meadows of green (it was a frog of some sort I think) I looked down at one point at my pencil and there, in the side of it, was my name, written in neat, even capital letters. The paint carefully nicked off the side of the pencil with a stanley knife in the days before I started school for the year. What year? My first year of school? My last? A little historical relic right there in my hand, several decades later, the careful capitals of my Dad at about the age I am now, delivering him to me, right in my kitchen. Latent colouring skills and little domestic relics. Friends forever.
Other lifelong friends include: favourite meals, dumb movies you’ve watched a thousand times and will watch another thousand even though you definitely don’t need to, certain exercises (throwing a frisbee, for me, will always be my friend) and, of course, the lovely friend that is clean sheets on a cold night when you’re thoroughly exhausted.
Public Service Announcement: you have more friends than you think you do. Call them. They’d love to see more of you. I’m planning to visit my old friend clean sheets on a cold night tonight. Now that’s a reunion that’s almost romantic.
This was originally published in The Big Issue.