Lunch

Only shot of the day, so it'll have to do. But I quite like it anyway. And now, let me tell you a story.*

Once upon a time, when I was midgey little munchkin, I had my first day at kinder. It was a big a scary place, that kinder in the middle of the bush out the back of nowhere, and my mum just took me out and left me. No warning. No preparation. One day I was safely ensconced in cotton wool, the next I was surrounded by ferocious monsters wanting to share the sandpit. Harsh or what? But I took it well. I fought strongly and bravely, I elbowed in well, and soon forgot all about that cotton wool of yesteryear.

As I stood surveying my new kingdom, wondering which corner to conquer next, I saw a little girl standing at the door crying. My mother's words came back to me. "Make some friends", she'd told me. "Make sure you play nice." And so I went to that tearful poppet, and said "Come and play! I'll be your friend!" And since that day, we've been through a lot. We've been through kinder together. We survived primary school. The horrors of high school were defeated in the face of our friendship, and German at uni was a doddle when we fought it together. I abandoned her for a couple of years and went to see some world, but the friendship stayed strong. We wrote letters, postcards and skyped. She sent me tim tams, I sent her haribo.

But then life got in the way. After 20 years, our time became more precious, and our schedules harder to co-ordinate. Our regular walks became sporadic. Our conversation was mostly by text or facebook. And we were greatly saddened by this turn of events.

But a friendship that's survived teenage-hood cannot be defeated by mere scheduling problems. And so now we have matching lunchtimes once a week. And so we'll get to sit in the sun and chat again. Life, boys, God, that random person in the supermarket who made you smile, it's all fair game. Brilliant!








*Disclaimer: Events may or may not have happened as depicted in this tale.