Old Friends
Mel and I, we haven’t seen each other in 17 years. We’ve kept in touch, on and off, all these years, first through postal mail, and then, when she got “PC’d” , through email.
She’s now a successful lawyer, in partnership with her partner in real life, but you wouldn’t believe it from these two pictures.
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Larking about in the campus coffee bar (1987 or 88)
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Still crazy after all these years, in her flat (2006)
I was supposed to meet up with another friend in Norwich but it didn’t happen as her mother-in-law fell ill and she couldn’t get away from the hospital visits.
There was one other Norwich friend, Susan, I wasn’t sure if I could meet up with her. I’d lost her email address and it got too late to send her something by post to let her know I was visiting. But I had her telephone number which I called upon arrival in Norwich. When I couldn’t get through, I borrowed the telephone directory from the Accommodations Centre to look her up (she’s one of those with a permanent address) and found there was an extra digit added to the front of the number. It took two tries before she finally answered the call, and when I told her who I was, she said “hang on, I need to find a chair to sit down, this is too much for me.”
Acting on the spur of the moment, she drove over to fetch me to her house. And there, we relived some of our campus memories, and took a picture in a familiar setting.
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Where the couch used to be (1989; painting on wall is by George, her partner) …
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… is now the dining table (2006; pictures on the wall not by George, but he’s still her partner)
