Oldest Best Friend

One of the joys of Facebook is the Memories page.  Every day it shows your past posts on that date, birthdays and ‘friends’ made - however many years ago.  Today it showed a photomontage with “Bentonbag and Oldestbestfriend, friends for 13 years”.  

It’s been a lot longer than that.   

Oldestbestfriend and I went into the Infants at Cwmifor County Primary School as ‘rising fives’ in 1961.  Only five children went in that year, one girl left soon after, and the other two were boys.  So we played together. 

I walked the half mile up the hill to school.  She lived on a farm over five miles away so her dad, Tom, brought her in the morning and took her home in the afternoon, usually in his white mini-van with string handles.  Sometimes he gave other kids a lift home too; we would all pile in the back like puppies.  Very occasionally, in the summer, the back doors would be left open and bold boys would sit with their legs hanging out, scuffing their heels on the road surface.  This was, obviously, long before the days of seat belts and elfinsafety.

In memory it feels like I spent every other Saturday of my childhood up at the farm.   

We played with dolls and dolls-houses but in dry weather we were free range children.  Sometimes her cousin would be there too, or a lad helping Tom with some farm work.  Every time I see a ‘little grey Fergie’ tractor I think of him with Oldestbestfriend on one wheel arch, me on the other, the lad clinging on behind and a dog or two at his feet.

Unlike me she was an only child so, when there was only me at home, if we were going on a hotel holiday (not visiting relatives in the North East) she would come too.  It was company for me and her mother knew she was in safe hands.  The photomontage shows us in Ilfracombe.

Like most country children Oldestbestfriend learnt to drive as soon as she could.  I was with her on her first solo drive; transporting a dead sheep up the little back road from the farmyard to the bungalow in the white minivan, with one of the dogs sitting on my lap.

After leaving school she trained as a radiographer in Oswestry and I went to university in Newcastle.  At the end of my second year she came up and stayed with us in the student flats at 16E Richardson Road.  None of my close friends from those days have forgotten her and one gentleman always asks after her when he sees me.

Our social lives followed similar lines.

We both got involved in traditional dance and music.

She married in her early twenties, I in my early thirties.

Both our marriages ended in the same year. I was widowed and her husband left for another woman.

When I went to visit her that Christmas we sat on facing sofas devastated beyond tears at our situations.

In my opinion being widowed is easier than being separated and divorced.   

There’s no acrimony or dividing of communal property for a start.   

But, more importantly, when your husband (or wife) dies you know it wasn’t their choice, they really didn’t want to go.   

With adultery, or just leaving, self confidence takes a hell of a hit and it can take a long time to rebuild (if ever).

But life goes on.

My fifteen year friendship with Fester turned into something different and two years later Ferretfingers landed, followed by Thunderthighs two years after that.

She eventually found friendship and love with another man, let’s call him Tudor, and five year after my boys their beautiful little girl arrived.  Their little girl is now away studying engineering.

Sixty years and eleven months of friendship, starting as two little girls and now we’re looking at drawing our pensions and claiming our bus passes.