An ordinary life....

By Damnonii

Well it was the 70's!

Archived 11.04.13

This is me (red dress) with my friend Fiona, summer 1976.

What can I say about Fiona? Well....

Her gran and my gran were friends, her mum and my mum were friends, so it was kind of inevitable that Fiona and I would be friends.

Despite living almost 2 hours drive from me, we always got together during school holidays when she came to stay with her gran in the summer. I used to go and stay at hers too and in all our childhood years I don't think we ever had a falling out. Our time together was too precious for that.

When I got married in 1989, Fiona was my Chief Bridesmaid and two short years later, she left to travel the world for a year, met a Kiwi in Australia, married him, had kids and never returned. In the intervening years I've only seen her twice and our online contact has been sporadic (she's not into social networking) but she is never far from my thoughts.

Last week she was in my mind a lot, particularly as I'd found her mum and dad's wedding photo and a pic of my mum at their wedding, when I was going through old photos. I was thinking that it was sad that I didn't have any photos of Fiona and I when we were children.

Well I could not believe it when I checked my emails on Tuesday morning and there was one from Fiona (it's over a year since we've spoken on the phone) with this photo attached, that her mum had sent to her at the weekend! I cried tears of joy at the memories of that long hot summer of 1976.

Memories of us singing and dancing on Fiona's gran's font lawn in these dresses pretending we were on telly. Hiding in the rhodedendron bushes and shaking them when people walked past, giving them a fright, making perfume out of mashed up rose petals and food colouring, going long walks up Castle Hill with jam sandwiches and Blue Riband biscuits, playing chases and hide n seek, and drawing, colouring in and more drawing.

Fiona is now settled in New Zealand and is a successful artist and sculptor (takes after her dad who is an artist with DC Thomson and illustrated Denis the Menace for the Beano from 1970-1998 and still does for the Beano Annuals, and the Bash Street Kids from 1962 - present, as well an many other cartoon characters).

On seeing this photo, I was reminded yet again, of just how precious photographs are. And whilst shots of stunning landscapes, brilliant macros or searing sunsets are wonderful to behold, when all is said and done, what moves us to tears joy, fills our hearts with love and at times the pain of loss, are simple little snapshots of a time gone by.

PS Is it just my imagination or is there a whiff of the insufferable Nellie Olsen from Little House on the Prairie about me in this pic! :-)))

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