Friends

I’ll be there for yoooooooooo……….cos you’re there for me tooooooooooo!



Isn’t that how the song goes? Why, whenever I watch the likes of Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc frolic through re-runs of Friends, do I feel quite bereft because I haven’t got 5 gorgeous friends with great hair who sit on my sofa and find everything I say hilariously funny. But then I look at the friends I actually do have and feel quite guilty for thinking thoughts along those lines. I’m not one to categorise my friends (nor am I boastful) but, well, I’ve got a lot. There are my every day friends……I class the postman as a friend because he buys my dogs presents and gives me child rearing tips. He’s also a great source of local gossip but that’s another story. Then there’s the Shopping Direct delivery man. He’s on my Christmas card list. So, I like catalogue shopping! Then there are friends from work (I haven’t struck up the courage to leave Mackenzie with a childminder and return to the rat race….thankfully my husband doesn’t mind supporting my shoe habit). There’s John and Sarah and Emily and Phillipa…..on and on into infinity. One of the joys of working for the NHS is the people!

My definite best friends feature greatly in my life (and therefore this blog)

There’s my sensible friend Eliza who has a little girl Ashley, who’s Mackenzie’s age, another one the way and makes her own bread. Every day! Then there’s Saskia who is a fashion buyer for a well known high street store and who always looks immaculate even in the depths of a hangover. Charlie (Charlotte to her mother) has just landed a fantastic job at a Central London hospital in the Communications Department and, although she isn’t looking forward to the commute, is quite keen on the amount of sexy doctors that will be littering the corridors. Andy, as camp as a row of tents, who is big in interior design with his life partner Adam (Mackenzie’s bedroom was a freebie and is fantastic – he loves the cartoon characters on the wall, my husband is freaked out by the lifesize version of Scooby Doo that is painted on the wall by the door). And then there is my oldest friend of all Trudy who I went to school with and between us we terrorised Mr Phillips the art teacher. She’s got twin girls who now terrorise anyone who comes into their orbit. It’s not often that I hate children but I dislike Alice and Anna intensely. Sorry, where did that thought come from?

And of course, there’s David my husband of five years. He’s the best friend a girl could I have, he’s my diamond. And he does a mean back rub and spag bol but obviously not at the same time.

I’m quite lucky to be able to call members of my family my friends as well. Mum and dad are my best friends even if, like best friends, we fall out occasionally. We always make it up in the end though. I’m incredibly close to my oldest and only sister Beatrice (oh how she’ll love me for saying that) – we’re great chums. She’s also provided me with a gorgeous nephew Ian and an equally scrummy niece Caitlin. I’m quite fond of her husband Stephen but not in that way obviously!

Best friends at school rarely lasted - apart from Trudy of course but even we lost touch for a couple of years before meeting up again at the swimming pool in Eltham. Don’t ask. I myself had a best friend each year at secondary school, come the following September I was auditioning for a new one. Fickle? Well yes, but I didn’t know the true value of friends back then. Now I do and I’d like to think I’m as good to my friends as they are to me. I am truly blessed with my friends, they are fantastic and I wouldn’t be without any of them…..they give me so much.

When Mackenzie was two months old and wouldn’t stop CRYING AND GOING ALL RED IN THE FACE and David was in Milan on business I did the most sensible thing in the world and rang Saskia, at 2.30am, for some advice. Saskia, who doesn’t have children, suggested that I put him in his cot, shut the door and go and mix myself a vodka tonic. When I shouted at her that that was the most irresponsible thing in the world ever, she said she was on her way. Forest Hill to Nunhead in five minutes flat. She arrived, took him off me, told me to go to bed and muffled his cries for another hour downstairs. He fell asleep mid bellow on her shoulder and she was frightened to move until GMTV started. Each of my fantastic friends has a different function in my life. Charlie always manages to cheer me up. Whenever I’m feeling low, as well as a wonderfully rallying phone call/night out, I also get supportive texts and wonderful cards. I can rely on her totally and she knows more about me that I think even I do! Anthony is so totally outrageous he doesn’t mind if I drink lurid pink cocktails and cackle inanely in public. Eliza reins me in when I’m going too over the top and always has a sensible way of looking at things – she’s quite the grown up which is what I need to counter balance my slightly childish manner. Trudy knows me of old, she remembers me when I had chickenpox and a crush on Mr Smith the English teacher and will never let me get above myself.

Reading this entry back I realise that maybe I don’t envy Ms Aniston and Co as much as I thought I did! Now, where did I put that DVD of Series 5?