Book Ends

Sometimes, things just come together. You make a little effort and the most wonderful experience results. I hadn't seen my Best Man Mick for many, many years. Neither of us are the sort to work out how long but it must be over fifteen years. He lives and works in the US and when he's back in Blighty he has that merry-go-round of family to visit. Thankfully, his lovely wife Pam is on Facebook and we work well as FB friends. She'd been posting about her trip to my home town Beccles and all the other great places they've visited this time round and I realised they must be coming to the end of their trip.

Pam had mentioned they'd flown in via Heathrow so I took a punt and dropped her a little message. If they were returning via Heathrow, and no-one else was seeing them off, could we pop along briefly?

Yes, no and yes. So we did, Cheryl, Josephine and I. We met in T5, between letter E and F, perfect!

And oh so quickly we'd caught up and were talking about all the little things that you only can with the closest of friends, even when you haven't seen them in aeons. Mick is the loveliest and funniest of people. Brilliantly down to earth, brilliantly Professorial, now an ecologist of sorts study the trees that grow under the oceans.

He'd dug out some photos of the time we'd spent 'round Garrod's': we'd meet up at Kev's house as often as we could back in our teens and that was were life was formed for me. That's where we worked out how we were going to avoid the inevitable draft to go and fight in the Falklands, stuff like that!

It was such a treat seeing Mick and Pam again, a real highlight. Life can be beautiful so often...

blue skies [Simon Calnan]