Are friends electric?

I think I’ve just lost a friend. It’s a really weird feeling. Like anyone who reaches my advanced age, I have lost plenty along the way through just not seeing them, not staying in touch, generally falling out of each other’s orbit. But this is the first time I can remember thinking, in the way you do when a relationship ends, “Right, that’s IT.”
The weird bit about this is going to be that we see each other very regularly as we work together, and that I am known at work (he’s massively senior) to be a friend of his outside work (he recruited me). But after a long spell of “yes, we must catch up properly” and cancelled supper and drinks appointments – I cancelled a couple, he far more - I finally felt something snap. You see, we’d both had Wednesday in our diaries for over a month, and he turned out to have gone on holiday this week, having said last week (when I said jokingly, “Still waiting for that cancellation notice, A”) that he would absolutely not cancel, it was getting ridiculous and he really wanted to see me.
It’s a really uncomfortable feeling. I don’t want to be the needy, high-maintenance one, but I need to balance that with a strong feeling that this is not a reasonable way to behave, and that old friends don’t simply get their secretaries to send a cancellation note in these circumstances.
Part of what is annoying me is that I feel I’ve stuck by him out of loyalty when he’s had an extremely bad press at work. There have been persistent rumours (yes, that sort of rumour) about him and other colleagues, about him behaving in a high-handed manner with others, and I have refused to listen to any gossip. Call me naïve, but even when he left his wife and surfaced months later with a much younger woman, I still didn’t entirely believe that the rumours were (all, at least) true.
And yet, and yet… he’s terrific fun to be with, a good conversationalist, interested in lots of things. I’ll miss him, but I can’t number among my friends someone who isn’t prepared to put the slightest effort into maintaining a friendship. I doubt he’ll miss me, or even notice any change in our relationship, but it will be a change that has already happened with others in his circle, and I’d stake good money that it’ll happen again. As someone said about Mrs Thatcher’s downfall, “if you create a wilderness around you, you are doomed, in the end, to inhabit it”.

A complicated life, well-lived

Some days you feel more connected to the world than others, and Thursday was one of them. On my way home at 9.30pm, after a day that had started at 5.30am, I stopped to talk to a dog (normal), and then without thinking batted a balloon back into play for some teenagers playing balloon tennis (not at all normal).

I felt more connected to the world because I had participated in marking someone else’s life: singing at a memorial service for T’s 90-year old father. It was an extraordinary life, and in a small way an extraordinary day.

Arriving bleary-eyed at Waterloo, we emerged from the crowd in ones and twos until about twenty of us were there, clutching cardboard cups of tea and coffee. We don’t all know each other well, but we instinctively stuck together, bound by a common purpose and the exigencies of the Isle of Wight catamaran timetable. We chatted, did crosswords, marked up little bits of music: you could feel the group shift and resettle, slightly nervy.

It’s a long way from London to the Isle of Wight. Not so much in miles, as in difference – flowering hedges and stuccoed houses called Sea View. The church was warm and full of small signs of what was going to happen (“Don’t sit there – those chairs are for the standard-bearers!”). We rehearsed: everyone wanting this to go well for T, but at first woefully flat and unmusical. Finally, like clouds parting or a headache lifting, it started to go better and a palpable feeling of relief spread through the group: it was going to be OK.

A rushed lunch, and then back for the service. Is there any more fraudulent feeling than walking through a guard of honour (naval, in this case) to which one is not entitled? No matter how calmly you try to walk, you’re scuttling apologetically inside. The church full of young and old, and many medals and banners.

And the eulogies, split between his naval career and his family. What were you doing when you were 24? This man was commanding a squadron of the Fleet Air Arm in the Second World War and was referred to, quite naturally, by his men as “The Skipper”. Swinging between affection and admiration (less of the latter for his driving skills, apparently, which owed too much to his abilities as a fighter pilot – scattered laughter from the many there who had clearly experienced it). I am always drawn to people who are described as not suffering fools gladly – and he was thus described by at least three people in the space of an hour and half. Less keen on the interdiction on women with sunglasses on the tops of their heads (and very glad that for once I had remembered to take mine off), and frankly baffled by the hatred of “certain episodes of EastEnders”.

Unexpectedly, it wasn’t T’s speech that had us reaching for the Kleenex, but his older brother’s. Lucky, really, as we had to sing straight after. We sang O For the Wings of a Dove (first time ever, for me, and chosen because T’s father had sung it as a choirboy), Faure’s In Paradisum, Walford Davies’ beautiful God Be In My Head and T’s own setting of the Compline prayer:

Be present, o merciful God, and protect us through the silent hours of this night: so we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world may rest upon thy eternal changelessness.

There was a silence when we finished – of surprise? Of peace? Satisfaction? I don’t know. “Should one applaud?” muttered one of the bemedalled crowd as we trooped back to our pew. They did. We should have been applauding them. Two minutes later, after the bidding prayer, the whole church was laughing at the final organ music – A Life on the Ocean Wave (followed by Crown Imperial), as we filed out slowly into the churchyard.

This was to be the big moment – a flypast by the remaining Seafire (naval Spitfire) plane. We were all listening out for the sound of the engine (“It could be, or there could be a lawnmower coming round the bend”, remarked H at one of the false alarms). Then there it was – small, noisy and incredibly moving. The plane flew low over the church, circled and wheeled around, rolled lazily over in the sky, and was gone again, back to its base in the West Country, as the sun suddenly came out from behind the clouds. Everyone was gasping, clapping, holding out their arms as if hoping to touch it. It was like the Second Coming.

We sang again at the reception afterwards, including Over the Rainbow. In my mind, this is linked to the last of the readings at the service, High Flight (http://www.deltaweb.co.uk/spitfire/hiflight.htm) - a world above and beyond the one most of us inhabit.

Back to the ferry – again, we narrowly missed one and had to wait at the terminal –rather a cattle-truck experience. A race on board to get the sundeck seats (success!), and the people sitting on the other side of the gangway were treated to Moon River and Let’s Do It, both of which they (and we) enjoyed. As they applauded, R explained cheerfully, “We’ve just been to a funeral – no, really, we HAVE….”, causing laughter on both sides. On to the train (consternation when we thought that we wouldn’t be able to get any drinks – R the hero of the hour for dashing off to buy a random assortment of mini wine bottles). The train cut through the Hampshire countryside, and it wouldn’t have been at all surprising to see the Seafire again, wheeling above. Instead, as we pulled out of Woking station, we saw a partial rainbow, startling in its intensity. As D said, “Looks like he must have approved”

Back to work

I'm back at work now - coming to the end of my first working week, in fact. The main surprise is how unsurprising it all is. Same desk, same colleagues, same routine (different tube station though!). Still, I am "working" from home two days a week for the moment, which means no travel, hurrah. This means that I wander around in my pyjamas with mad hair, thinking about what I need to do for work but not doing very much.

I'm sure I'll get used to it. In the meantime, I love the flat more and more: I can spend days at a time just pottering about in it. There was a frost today on the roof of MY SHED, which made me feel very grown up. And most of my stuff is now where it is going to live, though I am still annoyed with some things for not having an obvious home.

Part of my obsession with STUFF is having the right amount - enough that I can do the stuff I want to, without having so much that it gets in the way. It's difficult to tell if you have the right amount when you have different storage. I sound unhinged, don't I?

Feels like home

The aforementioned new flat is finally coming together. The Polish bookshelf-builders have left, taking their Protean gloom with them, and leaving behind a large amount of shelving. Today's task is to put the books on the shelves: I am already starting to play Kim's Game with them, remembering where various clumps of the different sorts (history, fiction etc) are temporarily living. This one could run and run.

But learning how to live in a new space takes time. The old flat was long and thin, rooms opening off a corridor. This one has them clustered around a central large landing. Eventually I suppose I will stop walking into the second bedroom when I want a wee in the middle of the night, but bathrooms are on the left, not the right, as any fule kno.

Guilt Post

Argh. Nearly a year gone by. Where? What did I do with it?

Reading back, Bucharest seems an awful long time ago, but since then I have been in London: and since the end of July I have been off work after having approximately 2kg of fibroids and ovarian cysts removed from me. Lovely. Actually, I have been amazed by how much better I feel, and, apparently, look, despite no makeup for most of the last 2 months.

Oh, and I've also bought a flat. An impulse buy, you know. Actually, it's the first one I'd seen that I thought "I WANT to live here", rather than "I COULD live here". Atticky, light, quiet... and if it wasn't so far out in the boonies, absolutely perfect. But after 13 years of living in the middle of town, anywhere less central was always going to be a bit of a problem, so I'm not getting too aerated about the boonie issue.

This post is the equivalent of those "oh god I've been so rubbish, will stay in touch better I swear" emails that you send. I do mean it, for now, but the flesh is weak and the spirit has just got cable telly. We shall see.

Oh, and another thing

I drink a lot, and I used to smoke a lot too. But I still think the EU ruling on whether you have to transport your own tobacco and alcohol across borders is likely to be wrong (i.e. it is likely to be that you don't have to).

The reason? Well, obviously the tax regimes in different countries are different, and for good reason - it's generally a national consensus that has been arrived at and is accepted by that country. If it's possible to chip away at the national revenue of a country like the UK, which has lower income taxes and higher purchase taxes on things like tobacco and alcohol, then eventually that regime will be unsustainable and we'll be forced to have a higher basic tax regime.

I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. I just don't like being forced into things. And I know that the tabloid gloating and jubilation about it will drive me beserk.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum

Taxis in Romania, as well as being driven by some of the most – ahem! adventurous drivers in the world, are price-regulated only in the sense that they have to display their costs on their door. These vary from 0.9 to 3 lei/km for the various firms, and then there are enterprising individuals who charge up to 10 lei/km. I presume they don’t get much repeat business.

This morning, the (enterprising individual) driver who has picked me up a couple of times was there again. He is a bit more expensive than the standard ones, but he speaks English and doesn’t drive the wrong way up the tram tracks, which counts for a lot in my book. We had the following exchange:

Me: The notice on your door says 1.5 lei per km, but the meter says 2.5 lei…
Him: It’s the cost of fuel. I must come back here after every trip.
Me: But the notice should say the correct price!
Him: But then if I am not in city centre and someone wants a taxi, I can take them for 1.5 lei.
Me: But the notice on the door should say what you charge everyone. It’s a lot more expensive than the companies.
Him: Look, the guys at the companies they don’t pay no tax. Everything is added up to zero! I go to the tax office every three months and I pay my taxes. Anyway we join the EU in one month. Then everything will be change.

I think I’m just amused at his indignation that I should imply there’s anything remotely dishonest about quoting one price and charging another. The difference to me is approximately £1, paid by expenses.

I was thinking that it was a sign of a newish economy where the free market is still not an embedded concept. But then I thought that probably the only reason I have never had this conversation in Greek (for instance) is because I don’t speak it.

In other news, I had breakfast sitting at the next table to an Italian general in full dress uniform. He was covered in medals. I was longing to ask what they were for, just as I always want to know what the Royal Family have won medals for.

Pee po belly bum drawers

For the puerile of mind, Bucharest is a good place to be. I have just walked from the Hilton to my beloved employer's offices: the route included Bulvardul Schitu and Calea Plopi. What's more, it's a beautiful morning, the sun is shining, a friend is arriving this afternoon and I managed to get here without getting lost. Zippety doo dah!

Now, oh yes, I have to do all the work I didn't get round to this week. Bugger. Oh well. I suppose I ought to be grateful that the Guardian talkboards appear to be down at the moment (I'm not, though).