Some friendships are measured in years. Others are measured in how quickly you can fall back into laughing like idiots the moment you’re together again.
I met up with an old school friend from Australia yesterday. Someone I’ve somehow managed to keep in touch with since the early days of Facebook, back when Facebook was still exciting and we weren’t being bombarded with adverts, reels and people telling us what they had for breakfast.
We’ve stayed in touch over all those years, despite the distance, life happening, and the occasional “We really must meet up one day!” that seems to be the universal language of long-distance friendships.
We have each time I’ve gone back home. Last time was 2014. This time yesterday he is here in the UK.
We went out for Sunday toast, which sounds ridiculously simple, but honestly, it was exactly what I needed. No grand plans, no fancy occasion, just two old friends sitting together, catching up on years of life and laughing.
And I mean laughing.
The kind where your stomach hurts, your face aches and you suddenly realise that everyone around you is probably wondering what on earth is wrong with you. Mainly because we are both pretty childish in humour and aren’t afraid to speak our minds.
There’s something rather special about an old friend. You don’t need to explain the history because they were there. They remember the younger version of you, the stories, the nonsense and probably a few things you’d quite happily have erased from history.
I did tell him a few things which I would imagine shocked him, but then that’s what friends are for. Warts and all. We will be catching up again this week but in the meantime while I’m working by day he is exploring kent.
Isabelle Cheren 