Sunday, October 21, 2012

Nothing like an old friend.


I am at the end of a three week break from writing, revising, email, twitter, linkedin,  and of course FB. Oh how easily we get attached to this form of communication. I occasionally checked email and FB and deleted most as I wanted to spend the time with my friend of......let’s see.... Glynis and I met in 1962-63(you do the math) at our first jobs as telephonists or switchboard operators for the GPO. At sixteen we were civil servants working the old plug type switchboards in a room with another hundred operators. I loved the job and would be a telephonist for the next 20 years. But most of all I loved the fact that Glynis was staying in a bed-sit with another girl and she was away from home. She was from the Border country in Scotland and it was quite usual for girls to go to the big city to get work.

I begged my parents to let me try living on my own but at sixteen they would not even consider it. Glynis and I became fast friends and I visited her home in the Borders and she visited my family in the tenements. We were both with boyfriends who would become our husbands. Joined at the hip, Glynis and I became engaged the same year and married the following year and I was her bridesmaid. That’s when I broke up the dynamic duo. My husband and I immigrated to Canada and Glynis and her husband settled in the Border country. We corresponded for years, ( yes, we even wrote letters) and had our first children five years later in the same month. Glynis had a girl and I had a boy.  When the children were little we visited back and forth and they stayed with us about four times over the years. As often happens life gets busy and complicated so the Christmas cards were few and far between but we always knew we would be there for each other.

Last year was one of those times. Glynis called to say Alistair, her husband was very ill. We talked constantly on the phone and finally she took him home to die. When he passed away this January we didn't hesitate to ask her to come and be with us for as long as she wanted.  She made it and spent Thanksgiving with us. Glynis is very close to her two daughters and their families but I hope she enjoyed the time with her old friends who have known her forever and could share stories about Alistair.

We introduced her to our friends here and went to a fall fair and we also visited old friends she had met on previous trips. A drive in the beautiful fall colours to Kincardine to friends for a few nights, visits to Goderich on Lake Huron and then Stratford with stops along the way. We had long talks into the night with a few gin and tonics to loosen the tongue as we caught up with the intervening years. We laughed, we cried and it was as if we had never been apart.

Glynis has gone home now and I gave myself another week to enjoy the fall colours and plan. Liz and I are on the last leg revising Body Perfect. You may have read that here before but I am always tinkering with it; but enough is enough. It will be ready by Dec 1st.

I have read some great Canadian crime writing this summer. One of my favourites is Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay. I entered a contest on Linwood’s facebook page with Orion Publishing and I won a signed copy of his book.  Lucky me.If you like thrillers this is the one.

Next on my list to read: Peter Robinsons- Watching the Dark: A DCI Banks Mystery and Giles Blunt- Until the Night. Those should keep me going for about a week.

Talk soon,
Slainte,
Pam

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