Morning rituals are a thing. Mine are caffeinated tea, a blog, Wordle and a dog walk. In no particular order. All should be completed by noon. Sometimes all done by 6 am.

Yesterdays Wordle was enlivened when this smiling face popped up, telling me there was a message for me from a friend and work colleague. We worked together at the dawn of the new century, but now she lives in New Zealand. We worked in a very specialised Critical Cardiac Catheter lab. Older than most of the staff we had a lot in common. I loved Sue for her insistence on hospital corners on the  thin mattress on the complex operating area/ x-ray, image intensifier. No matter what madness was going on everything was in its proper place and the sheets had sharp corners. She could also talk and laugh about anything. When our younger colleagues didn’t quite measure up to her standards she would mutter to me. “The trouble is we are predominantly in the minority”

Attending conferences with her was hysterical. She once hurried me up so effectively that we managed to get onto a VIP bus to entirely the wrong, and very luxuriously catered for Conference Social Event, and I had failed to get my knickers on. I may never have laughed so much at a work event. The ‘do’ was for the high flyers of the Cardiac World. Our few colleagues who were there wondered,  I am sure, how we had been invited, and to a degree kept a rather snobbish degree of distance from us. No so the really lovely people we shared a table with who knowing full well that we were there in error made us very welcome. All professional chat and one upmanship ceased, not because we couldn’t have joined in but because our inclusion in their group freed us up to talk and laugh about other stuff. A great evening was had and we were promised jobs in Liverpool or Ohio if we ever had the urge.

The next morning was a little bit of a blur, not helped by the owner of our small hotel crafting a home made water feature in her lobby, despite or perhaps because of her best efforts to make her entrance a haven of tinkling water, she has created a multicoloured, and rather large erect penis, bedecked by flowers from the tropics.

I was thrilled when she messaged me to say she would be at my local beach at 9 pm yesterday, she is in England to visit family, I was very happy. The bobbers had already planned to bob at the same place and time.

Of course we had failed to be quite specific enough! Here is Sue 20 feet below me on a different part of the beach. No hugging for us, just happy shouted greetings and a promise to meet up more accurately next week.

We keep in touch via Facebook and the blog. She, like many of you know almost too much about Bobbers. Once I had located her it seemed only polite to take all the bobbers to my viewing point and introduce them to her at my elevated location.

A very happy, if distant reunion.