Last month my best friend left London. Moved out. Bigger house, bigger garden and more familial support for raising the kids. You know the drill.
Neither of us Londoners, we moved to the big smoke together after our journalism postgrads at Cardiff University, renting above a chicken shop on Ladbroke Grove, west London, right next to the Tube, so close I could feel London Underground’s vibrations as I slept. In fact, that whole flat’s soundtrack was almost exclusively provided by Transport for London, as we had a busy bus stop right outside too.
Yet we laughed, partied, cried and amazingly slept very well in that first London abode. This was even despite an electricity meter we had to power with a pay-as-you-go charge card that would always run out when we least expected, plunging us into darkness. We couldn’t quite reach the slot to put it back into once more money was loaded – cue scenes in the communal corridor as I lifted my pal above my head to re-insert the damn thing.
Me and my dear friend haven’t lived together for a long time. That mouse-ridden vibrating apartment experience will soon be nearly 20 years old. Many rentals have happened in between, as well as a spell of her living in New York. Then she came home, our home anyways, met a brilliant man and ended up moving to my ends in south London.
But now she’s gone.
Did I make as much of her while she was here in the same city as me as I could have done? Honestly, we could have done more. But lockdown, into work, into marriage, into two children means life is a fog of late. It was always made better, though, by seeing her beautiful face and curling up on the sofa together, me with tea and her with a sodding water (her only fault is that she doesn’t do hot drinks. And no, mate, white hot choc doesn’t count).
We went through a phase of a weekly Tuesday date night – a steadfast commitment. It was pure bliss. Now we will have to negotiate and put the hours in to find those dates during the year, working out who goes where. She will also commute to London most weeks, so perhaps I can cadge some time that way.
We already have a two-night staycation booked for the end of the month, where we will snatch some hours away from our families like illicit lovers. I am so very happy for her and cannot wait to see her new place, having moved her in and out of a few places along the way to finding this beaut. But seriously, when did it get so hard to simply hang out with our friends?
There is a very serious point to be addressed about what property prices and steep rents are doing to us all; how challenging it is becoming to be near those we love in cities we have built careers in. I am not ignoring that stark reality – but this is not that piece.
Instead, I want to take a moment to remember the unplanned. The weekends that folded into one long messy togetherness. Those days where the next morning was as important as the night before; the endless dissecting of our existence over drinks and toast.
The departure of my friend from the city we grew to call ours coincided with me interviewing the poet Hollie McNish this week. I first discovered her work on my maiden maternity leave with her book on what the hell parenting can do to you, aptly called Nobody Told Me. I remember feeling like she was peering into my tired soul.
It was Hollie to the rescue again with her new weighty tome, Lobster, which lo and behold, had a poem on exactly this issue: entitled: “poem written one night when I was really missing some of my friends”.
She told me she felt moved to write it after seeing her teenage daughter having a sleepover with a group of her friends all hanging out together on her living room floor. She realised how much she missed that feeling, of being surrounded by pals and the ease of getting together.
When I told my six-year-old son what this week’s column was all about, his eyes lit up, and he begged me to mention his best mates and how much he loves being their friend. I always try to explain what I am writing and thinking about for this newspaper. Friendship is the first column topic he has been able to relate to.
Before sharing her own words, Hollie chose to quote E.B. White from Charlotte’s Web: “You have been my friend, replied Charlotte. That in itself is a tremendous thing.” I already had something in my eye. Then I had the pleasure of welcoming Hollie to the Woman’s Hour studio where she read her poem in full and I sat back and listened. I have to quote a couple of parts here:
“My friends are scattered across cities now/ across countries and countrysides… I am so sick of dates in the diary/ and I keep missing the timing of WhatsApp chats… Fuck, where have you gone? I just want you here.”
The dates in the diary line hit me like a sucker punch. As did a line wishing her friend would simply knock on her door. Remember that?
I know in this day and age that would be even scarier than simply calling someone. “Always text” seems to be the sad rule: text to say you are going to call. Text to say you are going to call about when to next meet. And then eventually meet. So it goes on.
Post lockdown I am not sure we are even back into the swing of making such arrangements as regularly as we did, which is sad. That will take some more time to undo. Meeting up with those we love too often becomes a chess game at my stage of life, especially with small children in the mix.
But, while I tire of the machinations, I always dig in and try to make the bloody plan. It is usually worth it, regardless of how many texts and negotiations go on. People are separated into those who plan and those who are planned for. I know which camp I am in.
Sometimes though, I find I am so sick of dates in the diary, like Hollie says. And I yearn for my best friend to be able to knock on my door.