Grey Day

For many years, I had a close friend, Barbara, whose birthday was the day before mine. Today, in fact. Every year we'd have a battle to bag the nearest Saturday for our party. ("I invited my friends first, you've got to come to mine" - "No, I've already invited all my lot. I can't!" - "Well, let's combine..." - "No, mine won't travel to Putney.")

She lived in Lowestoft, but every year she would stay with friends in Putney and have a gathering at a pub near the river. The pub was on an isolated stretch miles from public transport, which meant that, as a non-driver, I could never go. Year after year, we would miss each other's birthdays yet spoil one another by post, with two, or even three, parcels full of goodies, garnered over the course of a year from jumble sales, charity shops... a magpie hoard of special things, a beaded picture frame, a silk scarf fabulous with exotic birds, a linen jacket, a book of love spells. Nobody will ever give me the like again. It took Barb's imagination to find them. Both Pisceans, we were completely tuned into one another's humour, idiosyncracies and souls.

This weekend, no Barbara gathering made a merry din in the pub. She dropped dead of a stroke last July. Today is grey and raining, both outside and in my heart. I picture the rain-lashed beach in Lowestoft, molten silver waves rolling in. I picture myself standing there, hair plastered to my face by the ice-laden wind, and I see my astral self cast a single red rose onto the heaving water. Happy 60th birthday, Barb. x