Remembrance of Times Past - Birthday Girl Memories

Another non-gardening post - but I have a good excuse ...

Today I am the Birthday Girl - I won't tell you how old I am - it is a lady's prerogative, only to say that the Beatles once wrote a song about it.

Imagine my surprise when a birthday card plopped through the letter box with a Vietnam postmark

It is from my oldest friend J who is visiting her son who works over there.  I have known J since we were in the same class at school together.

J - top left / me bottom right
1963 

It seems like we have known each other for ever.

School trip to the Trossachs
Scotland 1963 - just look at those short shorts (or lack of them)

After we left school we went to different secretarial colleges but after the two years were up found ourselves in our first jobs working in the same typing pool

Lunch break
Lee Circle, Leicester
1967

We went on holidays in the UK together with our work friends

Hunstanton
1967

and holidays abroad

La Palmera
Malgrat-de-Mar
1968

We drank a lot, smoked a lot, got drunk and had lots of laughs.  That is what I remember most - having fun and laughing - all the time.

We loved to dance and party; dancing was our main weekend occupation - hours spent with rollers in our hair and  putting on the 'slap' prior to going out.  We were what the modern press calls 'party animals'.  Hitching rides and gatecrashing parties was the norm - word soon got round as to where the action was.

Me aged 19 - heavens I look so young!

Sadly, all good things come to an end and the inevitable happened, we both met our future partners and got married and went our separate ways.

J went to live abroad - I stayed put,  and over the years we lost touch.  It happens.  But then a couple of years ago, on the off-chance, I decided to write to an old address I had of J's in the slim hope that maybe she would still be there.  I couldn't have got the timing better - she had just returned to England from living in Spain and had moved back in to their old house.

 We started emailing, catching up on all the news over a span of 40 years - a couple of Christmasses ago she came to see me on her way through to somewhere else.  It was strange seeing the face that was so familiar and dear to me all those years ago, different but still the same.  We didn't have too much time to catch up, and maybe one day in the not too distant future we will meet up again - J and her husband  live down south, and are in and out of the country all the time visiting their children - so it won't be easy.

  Over the years our lives have taken different directions - a case of Town Mouse versus Country Mouse.

  Meanwhile we swap Christmas and birthday cards and chat on the computer. 

In this case Auld Acquaintance wasn't forgotten and still having J as a friend after all this time is definitey a bonus birthday present.

(Sorry for the quality of the photos - I don't have a scanner and had to take a photo of a photo - if only we had had digital cameras in those days).