Friends Friday - I wrote this on paper yesterday!

I have been learning over the past couple of years that relaxation time can be just as productive as hours spent with head down at a desk forcing oneself to work on that masterpiece of literature.  Time with friends is time well spent, now I know.  It used to be that I would feel guilty being with my pals, drinking huge quantities of tea and devouring mucho packets of biscuits.  But there is truly something restorative about going round to someone's house for a natter.  And even if you don't really need to make use of their healing powers, just putting the world to rights for a bit, at the very least, makes you think about things from a different perspective for a while.  That can be invigorating, if you allow it to be.

Even better if you have friends like mine, who bitch not at all (unless absolutely necessary!) and offer encouragement and praise, for every tiny achievement, by the skipload.  Never do I feel so puffed up and full of myself as when I've spent some time with Sara, Sarah and Sarah-jane (in no particular order - I love you all dearly).  Tremendous friends, and I really couldn't wish for better ones.

This is so not like me.  There was a time not so long ago, when I would tire of people very quickly - that's not a poor reflection on my friends, but rather a negative quality in myself.  A lack of patience and tolerance, which I haven't had to learn to control because it's just disappeared, thank goodness.  And now I can see that there was never anything that I needed to be patient about or find tolerance for.  I have just been a cranky old hermit for most of my life!  No more of that - I've left my cave, and don't intend to go back in it for a while.

And of course, the huge advantage of chatting to lovely people is that when you do have your time to yourself you're very eager to use it wisely.  Well, I am anyway.  I am now able to make use of the odd half hour here and there - a blog  entry can be written in half an hour (a hub can't, a hub takes a good couple of hours of thinking).

Macmillan coffee morning this morning (after a brew at Sara's!), then coffee (and Waterstone's - my poor overdraft!) in town, with Sara, and then tea at Sarah's with Sarah-jane too.  What a lazy and lovely day.  Please understand that I do not spend all, or indeed many, of my days like this (Rev. Roy - I do not, honest, I am not completely lazy, like what you fink I am!).  I am just blogging about it because it's been such a happy day.  And there are more happy days to come - me and Sara made plans today; here come the girls, oh yes.

Sara is actually a terrible friend though, truly.  She practically cudgelled me over the head and dragged me into Waterstone's - I didn't want to go; I only have a Waterstone's loyalty card because I was forced to have one.  And Sara, wicked woman, made me buy two books.  She made me.  But at least I did buy mind-broadening books - one, a beginner's guide to humanism, and the other, Derren Brown's book about the psychology of magic and the supernatural.  Good, good.  Books to read in snatched spare minutes.  I would imagine that I will struggle to understand much more than the words 'and' and 'the' in both of these books, but still, I try.  I'm sure there's a genius locked inside me somewhere - I can feel it fighting to get out, but it's been locked away one of the basement rooms of my mind.  I distinctly heard it once, when I heard the word Brobdingnagian and my genius knew what it meant.

Ugh, whatever.  Wittering again.  :)

Friends, awww

I had something all mushy and gushy to write about friends, but I came home from school and spent the morning by myself and forgot what it was that I was going to say.

I like friends.

Friends are good.

Friends are important.

Sometimes I'm not a good friend, but sometimes I am. Depends.

I'm so much of a loner that I probably come across as being moody with my friends from time to time. I'm sure of that. I know that I snap at people, and that I sigh when I'm obviously thinking that something my friend is saying is ridiculous, even though they're not actually saying anything ridiculous at all, it's just that I'm in a bad mood. It's nothing to do with the friend - it's usually a 'it's not you, it's me' sort of thing. If I feel like I've seen the same person too much (for too much read more than one visit a week that's long enough to have a cup of tea and biscuit) then I sometimes get ratty. If I make plans to see someone more than once in a week I usually enjoy the first visit, but then cancel any subsequent meet-ups, because I'm a cow!

Selfish, you see? I don't like giving up too much of my time. I'm greedy with my time. I like to store it up, selfishly, and use it all completely by myself. I might waste a lot of it, but at least I've spent it by myself and no-one has stolen it from me. It's my time to waste. If I share it with someone, then it becomes half theirs and I don't control it any more.

But then most days are like today, when I don't really feel like that. Friends are precious today. Friends give spontaneous hugs that catch you off guard and make you have to rush off before you burst into tears in front of them and look like a wally (thank you for that hug yesterday Sara - it made my week!). Friends also tell you that your hair looks fab, even when you think you've made yourself look like a boy and wish you'd just gone to Jo & Cass to get it fixed. Friends are all over the place, my little world is saturated with them, and they're just about everywhere I look. There are friends within my family, there are friends within other people's families, there are very young friends, and very old friends (my oldest friend, in age, is Olga, and I think she must be about 85 now - though I haven't seen her for a while, and would love to get back in touch with her, because she was a right laugh when I worked with her at the uni!), there are friends that wave when they're on Lollipop duty, there are friends all over the world that send (((((hugs))))) over the magical interweb. There are friends who haven't been met yet - exciting!

Lots of friends.

Lovely.