There were once two girls who met on a holiday in Scotland. One was Margaret from the north and the other was Claire from the south and they were both ten years old. They started talking during a long walk to the loch with a retired gamekeeper and his Labradors and for the rest of the two week holiday, where you found one, you found the other. They cried their young hearts out when parting, and as soon as they'd stopped crying they were working on their parents to get together again. Not easy, with the length of England between them. This was long before mobile phones, and long distance phone calls were a rare treat, but they wrote enough letters to account for a small rain forest in Brazil. They plotted, they worked on their families, they got together at every opportunity. You might as well have tried to keep north and south magnets apart. It got a lot easier once they were old enough to shoot around the country in trains.
In due course they vetted each other's boyfriends and gave permission to marry accordingly. They godmothered each other's children. And today Claire and I met up for a day out in Durham - a walk along the river, lunch in the Cathedral refectory, a bit of shopping and a return to the Cathedral just to be there and also to say hello to our local saint, Cuthbert, who is buried there.
Claire and I have always developed the same interests at about the same time. Today I recommended a series of books I've just discovered, the Flavia de Luce novels by Alan Bradley. She's reading them too. I passed on a Marika Cobbold novel. She's read it, but will happily read it again. Claire has read everything. Twice. And she recommended the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch, so that will go on my list. And following our conversation today, and just in case a certain somebody reads this -
TIDY YOUR ROOM!
You know who you are.
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