Staying in Touch

I think one of the things I have a hard time with is in understanding how to maintain friendships in everyday life over a long period of time. I mean friendships and not romantic relationships, I should clarify that.

Growing up, and having certain personality traits indicative of AS (although whether I could be diagnosed as such is unclear), I found friendships very difficult. I don't recall being especially shy or awkward before the age of six, indeed I can recall having three specific friends (Susan, Paul and Sharon. Funny how I can remember that, and remember where the first two lived). However, once we moved up to Scotland it was a different story altogether.

Part of the problem was that my entire class had all gone to school together, and for the most part so had their parents. It was still quite an insular and isolated community back then, incomers were comparatively rare and the local businesses were owned by local people. There were no big supermarket chains: there were a couple of independent grocers and a Templetons store (they were bought out by Presto who in turn were bought out by Safeway who were bought out by Morrisons who had to sell some stores to Somerfield, which is who owns the big supermarket now. That was newly built on the site of some old depots on Latheron Lane about ten years or so ago...another segment of my childhood destroyed, as we used to play around the depot buildings.

There were no other English people, none at all.

I remember my first day at that school. I was seated next to the class bully, who pinched and poked and prodded me under the desk all day. By morning break, I was miserable. My clothes were wrong, my hair was too blonde, I was too tall, I was posh because my accent was so different and my parents were rich and owned a shop and I was a stuck-up English cow. They wanted nothing to do with me.

Whether it was curiosity, pity or the hope that by hanging out with the newsagents' daughter they would get lots of free sweets I don't know, but from time to time some brave soul or other would take up with me for a while and spend time hanging around me. It never lasted long, and I accepted this. I didn't expect anything more or less. It was vastly preferable to being bullied by everyone. Mostly they were also incomers and moved on again with their families within a couple of years. It wasn't - still isn't - the kind of community you can function in if you are not welcomed in by the locals. My parents managed it, but it took 25 years.

Anyway. I never had a friend long enough that I had to worry about how to maintain a friendship over a long period of time. My best - and oldest - friend, Dave R, has been my friend now for 15 and a half years. He's known me since I was 21, and is the only one of all my friends to have the distinction of having met all of my boyfriends. Except for my current partner, and that will be rectified I hope quite soon. We meet maybe once or twice a year and sometimes don't meet for two years or more at a time. Our friendship was forged over a six month period while we were both studying journalism, he on the academic year course and me on the calendar year course. We can instantly take up from the point that we left off.

Of course, email and telephone calls keep us in touch inbetween times. However, as he doesn't use the same chat sites as me, I do find it difficult to keep in touch with him when they occupy me a great deal. I should call him, tomorrow. (Too late tonight).

My two closest female friends in the real world I have had no contact with for over a year, over two in Tina's case. I really should call or write.

I spoke to L this evening, though, who I used to work with in Bradford. Last time we actually spoke was in January. I telephoned her shortly after she left her husband. A couple of weeks later her father was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and he was gone in a matter of days. Then she had a fall and broke a bone in her hand. It looked as though she might need an operation, but they managed to fix it by putting her hand in plaster and keeping it immobilised that way. It's healed up pretty well, she says.

The family department there is now five fee earners strong, rather than three and a half as it was when I was there. The firm has merged with another local firm and will relocate to new offices in December of this year. The big bad boss spends most of his time in the offices of the other firm in the city centre now, much to L's relief. He's still trying to get her back into his bed, but she's got a new fella now herself so isn't biting.

She's seeing a fireman, he's 46, divorced twice, a daughter the same age as her daughter Olivia, and they've been dating for three months now. Nothing serious - they're both newly divorced or separated - but she's having fun. Sounds happier and more optimistic than in all the time I've known her.

I'm hoping to meet up with her tomorrow. I have a dental appointment in a town near to her, and I am hoping to stop in on the way home and spend some time with her. She may have the kids with her tomorrow, so it looks likely to be at her home if we do meet up. She'll text me tomorrow.

I miss the camaraderie that we had at work. We worked bloody hard, the boss was a lunatic, but we got on so well (except for MG, who was universally regarded as a sneak and a tyrant and an inveterate dumper of work on others). I especially miss F, who is hugely experienced in care cases and was a source of knowledge and advice that I really appreciated. I have an invitation to pick her brain whenever I like, but I don't like to push that too hard.

Lisa K had her baby (yet another Ellie!!) in January, too. She and her bloke had parted in the months before she fell pregnant but reconciled - in the meantime she'd sold her house to pay him out on separation and was back in digs with her two kids from previous relationships. They split again just before the baby was born. She's doing okay, although it's a struggle to raise three children on her own. Her family will help with childcare so she can go back to work, and her older children are 13 and 10 now so not quite as dependent on her.

The other Lisa is expecting her second child next January, and E who used to be a litigation secretary is expecting, too. Her husband had a vasectomy reversal and they managed to get pregnant. She was working in Tesco but is now with another local firm of solicitors, doing family secretarial work which is her preference.

It's our 6 month anniversary on Friday 8 June, D and I. Grinning. I'm a lucky girl, to be so loved and by someone so wonderful.

And I have my first mosquito bite of the summer...deep joy.