School chums

I guess my friend Di probably knew this was coming, I did say a while ago that I was going to write about friends and friendships and then just did one small post about other people's friends.

Friendships are like rings in a tree trunk, but they are also like impossibly large webs of connections. Over the years and at different periods in my life I have had many friends and some have stayed connected and some have disappeared into the networks of other friends.

Yesterday I received a parcel from Di with this and other hessian shopping bags in it and it kind of completed a little triangle, two other friends from schooldays, Kerry and Eve had contacted me in the last few days.

The period of my life which started with secondary school was marked by a move to Surrey. My father had left the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and had taken a job at the Animal Virus Research Centre in Pirbright, a small village with several claims to fame. The AVRC developed the treament for foot and mouth disease, a previous squire of the village had been the Lord Stanley after whom the Hockey cup is named and there was an army base there, mainly guards and the regiment of gurkhas. The village was situated not far from Aldershot, the home of the British Army.

I met Di on my first day at grammar school. Woking County Grammar School for Girls. Looking back, I cannot see how other friendships started, but with Di it was clear, Miss Anderson, our form teacher had to register us in a physics laboratory and there we sat, Di and me, side by side on lab stools.

Somehow relationships grew, I had another group of friends, Di had another group of friends. I don't know how the friendship code allows that you can run two strong friendships alongside one another, but we all did. I had a group of six friends and within that two closer friends, Kerry and Eve and then sometimes I was with Di. I seem to remember standing in the chocolate cupboard queue a lot with Di, but sitting around speaking a mixture of Latin, French and German with Kerry and Eve, which for some reason we thought no-one would be able to understand because it was all mixed up.
Kerry made up a language. I can't remember the name of it, but I can still recall how to say 'I am a girl,' 'crap pipk ein lamtin.' My mother told me off for saying 'crap' although neither Kerry nor I knew what the word meant.
Kerry now lives in Croatia with her husband and four children and has done for many years and she translates for a living.
Eve is an artist and writer and always was, even at school. She waited until she was 40 to marry and then married the most perfect man for her.

Di and I though, we got into bother together. Both sets of parents were told that the other girl was a bad influence on their daughter. I think we just saw reflected mischief in each other. I'm sure we only bunked school twice, but we did it together.

Di's cousin was a saddler and we went to visit him. He lived in the country and grew illicit plants. He had a big open fire that burned wood. We would go there and it was a different world from our grammar school life. He loved Arlo Guthrie and we listened to 'Alice's restaurant' over and over. He had a different take on all sorts of things, challenging our way of thinking.

Over the years, Di and I have kept in touch and seen each other from time to time, but the wayward ways of our lives have continued to reflect each other. Men, marriage, children, study, careers, it's almost as though similar choices have made us.

All four of us moved away, two of us to different countries. That experience though, of secondary school, is like a rich soil that we shared and helped us grow. I didn't of course feel it at the time, but I look back and feel what a very special time that was, how lucky we were to be in that environment, valued and challenged by some truly great teachers. We were children and yet we were young women. The school and those women gave us all it could, the rest we found in the other people whose company we sought. Friends.

That time formed a very wide ring in the tree and a tight part of the friendship web, a web that it still growing.