I have been pondering the bonds of friendship recently having just reconnected with a friend, more than 30 years after we last met.
The picture above is a friend I have not seen for exactly 5 years.
Now I can easily track my blogs I have a degree of certainty about these things.
Pandemic Pondering #444
I have been collecting friends since just before Infant school.
The friendship longevity record is held by my pre-school friend Juliet. I was named after her and always felt slightly in awe. Probably because she was older and wiser. Our friendship was forged by our mothers who had been friends from birth. In turn their mothers had forged their friendship simply by the serendipity of meeting on the post-natal ward of a small cottage hospital in Essex. The grandmother’s friendship was the most unlikely one of all. Juliet’s grandmother ran a shop and was warm, a fabulous cook and religious. My grandmother at the time, was a nurse, very irreligious and ultimately ran a pub. She was warm too, maybe too warm if you were a handsome man. I was never aware of her cooking. Three generations of friendship grown from a most unlikely pairing.
I have been collecting friends ever since. School. Work. Neighbours. Clubs. Some have been lost along the way.
I have always thought that finding a true friend is like finding love. A little bit of research this morning has proved that to be correct.
But here is the surprise !
Which is why Marc is the poster boy of this blog. Beyond his radiant smile, he always smells delicious. I can only dream of being consistently as fragrant as he is. Sometimes we worked 24 hours straight together and he always smiled and was always perfectly acceptable to be up close and personal with even in our worst of moments. Presumably I was in the thrawl of his invisible accelerator for platonic attraction. Who knew!
The reason this particular retirement gathering stands out is that it was the first of any such gathering after Covid.
By one of life’s great coincidences my very last social gathering before Covid, was with the exact same group of friends and colleagues in London. The last outing before Covid hit the world and almost certainly my first exposure to the Covid Virus, which has taken away forever a fully functioning sense of smell. And yet still I manage to make friends.
Thank goodness there are other pathways.
Before this mornings research I would say my particular friendship recipe would be.
A positive outlook.
A creative and enquiring mind
A little bit of non-clinical madness.
Vibing on a similar wavelenth
Good sense of humour
Loyalty and Kindness
My excuse for not giving access to the friend zone is usually.
” Not exactly my cup of tea”
Even with today’s research I am going to stick with that because it is a gentle rejection. Iron fist in a velvet glove perhaps but gentle on the outside
Saying someone just doesn’t smell right takes the rejection to all sorts of different places. But goodness me the smell theory really fascinates me because I have always thought there was something intangible involved. I thought it was my limbic system.
But then with a little more research I discovered something that I had forgotten. The Olfactory bulb lives within the limbic system.
So I was right all along.
Five years ago this bunch of friends were my cup of tea and they all smell just wonderful.
Rather a ponderous ponder. They happen.
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