Look at how many people were queueing round the block to go in:-

Last week six of us went out for dinner. One of my friends had just had braces fitted and was not coping very well with the initial shock – they are the train track ones, but they go behind her teeth so they are completely discreet and you can carry on with your life as if nothing has happened….not. For a start she couldn’t speak without lisping and she was dribbling. They hurt so much that she hadn’t really been able to eat anything but soup and they had ulcerated her tongue. The friend sitting next to her was a dental surgeon who was pointing out that those particular braces can make people suicidally depressed. She recommended macaroni cheese from the menu for her to eat because it was soft.

Well. I’m afraid I got the giggles as my friend, quite pissed by now suddenly discovered that macaroni cheese was possibly the worst thing you could eat. Large lumps of macaroni had wedged themselves with the help of metal and that cheesy glue to the inside of her mouth. Her tongue was pushed back to the middle of her mouth and as she attempted to have a normal conversation about something, she literally couldn’t pronounce the words. She made no sense at all. Poor thing. They’ve got to be on for a whole year. Luckily for her she’s got a lovely husband. I don’t think it’s something I’m going to consider for the moment – not the best look when you’re single.

Last night I went over to my oldest friend’s house. There were a few of us who grew up in Hong Kong together and we were reminiscing about our time there. My friend used to live on Lantau for some of the week – where the airport is now, but at the time, it was an incredibly remote outlying island. She really did have the most extraordinary upbringing, living on a tea plantation and right next to a Buddhist monastery in the middle of nowhere. We were laughing about how eccentric her stepfather was. Their house was always full of feral animals, dogs, cats, snakes, spiders – I remembered lying in bed one morning and her mother warning us about the rats nest above her bed…when and if any ever dropped out, her stepfather used to put them back in the nest.

Again, just a lovely girly evening reminding me that even though, when you live abroad as a child you don’t have the root system your friends have who don’t move away… the reality is that there were four of us there last night who had been to the same primary school and secondary school – we’re so lucky to have that shared history, our heritage and we have got roots after all – tap roots established in two totally different cultures.

When I acquired my first boyfriend at the scarily young age of 13, I went out with him for 4 years!! 13 – 17 – what a ridiculously long time to spend with one person. I don’t regret it though, we had a fantastic friendship and learnt everything together – it might however give some indication of just how crap I have been throughout my entire life of letting go of things.

This was pointed out to me yesterday after taking my friend’s advice and going to see my old counsellor. The one who didn’t really want to see me again after spending a lot of time easing me through the pain of divorce. I think she was terrified she’d never get rid of me again. This time, after our session she told me she didn’t think I should invest lots of money in coming to see her, that I should be able to work it all out for myself and anyway, she was moving very very soon. “No, she didn’t know where exactly”.

I have written down the key things she said. Not very much because she is just meant to “guide” rather than “advise”, but perhaps enough to think about for a minute. When I told her about why I felt I had to split up with Builder Bloke again and about the two hour meeting with my ex husband she had the same reaction as everybody else:- “of all the many divorced people I know, not one has to go and pick up a cheque”. When I said that I didn’t mind that much because I understood his anger at having to give me lots of his money she looked horrified. “You deserve that money. It’s what was agreed. If he’s angry it’s his issue – why do you feel the constant need to engage with him? You are divorced. Why can’t you let it all go?”.

I told her it was because I wanted to be friends again one day. That it was important for the children, as much as anything else and she said “but he didn’t like you when he was married to you. Why do think he would like you now?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He had an affair remember, he can’t have liked you”.

It got me thinking about whether you can be friends after divorce. Perhaps it depends entirely on the reasons for the separation – but not everybody agrees with the above statement surely? Sometimes having an affair is about not liking yourself, or your situation or some other trigger….

Or is it?

One of my bestest friends in the world is moving to Australia with her family next week. Tonight is their leaving party. I can’t really imagine life without her and yet I have fully encouraged her to make the move. It’s got to be done. It’s a fantastic opportunity for all of them and what’s the worst that could happen? They hate it and come back. Far better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all…and all that bollocks.

And yet…I am feeling very, very sad about it. She and I started walking around our local park together every Monday, joined a year or so later by another two very good friends and this has become our own private, very necessary institution. We have been walking religiously now for 5 years. I don’t honestly think I could have got through my divorce without her – I must have had about 800 hours of the best counselling one could ever hope for. Laughter, tears, advice, support, you name it, I’ve had it.

She has set up a blog that she’s going to write from Down Under – a “glob”? Her second entry was about her friends and our walk:-

“We have walked round the park every Monday for the last 5 years , which is about 260 times …covering about 18,200 miles roughly speaking. But emotionally we have covered much, much more. Divorce, affairs, pregnancy , babies, fall outs, difficult teenagers, jobs, boyfriends, no boyfriends, husbands and lots of tears. A true mark of a friend is when something happens to you and it hasn’t happened properly until you have told it to those friends. That is how I feel about my Monday morning walkers , we cover everything and each concern is discussed, diluted by telling them and each joke funnier by sharing it with them. Everybody has this, but until you leave you can’t evaluate how precious people are to you”.

She will leave a large gap in my life. My other two friends and I will carry on without her, but it won’t be the same.

Still. It is not forever. It’s for three years. So that is another 16,400 miles we have to walk, another 120 coffees we have to drink, another few hundred tears we have to shed and another 1000 laughs we have to have before she comes back. We’ll save her place though- she could never be replaced.

Our friendship has been one of my life’s greatest privileges. I can’t bear to let her go.

Today I was with my friend who’s view of life I probably respect more than anybody else’s in the world and we were talking about “stuff” as usual. Her son is currently traumatised because for some reason he’s got it into his head that he is a “test-tube baby”. “I know I am”, he keeps saying to her, “because all my friends are”. He was also puzzled as to “at what point do you have to take the baby out of the test-tube?”.