To my considerable excitement, Hong Kong based best friend Lucy is BACK IN THE COUNTRY FOR ONE WEEK ONLY. Due to a combination of sibling weddings and new arrivals selfishly eating up most of this time, we have only the precious window of lunch on Sunday, with the possible bonus of dinner on Monday night, before she flies back to her job as a modern day Mary Poppins for a rich Chinese family called the Yangs.
I was seven and had just moved schools when Lucy approached me in the playground to let me know that she might have an opening for a best friend, and was I interested. I was new to the school and had a bowl cut, so wasn’t really in a position to turn down any offer of friendship. So I accepted, and there followed an inauguration ceremony in her garden after school, witnessed by an Irish Terrier called Fennel.
We were both blonde, pasty children, with the spaced-out look of a pair of moomins, drifting through our school days together in a happy, prattled-filled bubble. In our first never-ending unviersity holiday we went travelling around Northern India together (prattling with nice views), where at a particularly tourist-infested spot called Bhagsu, a nice man came up and asked if we had the time. Last Christmas, the same nice man asked if I would come with him to pick out an engagement ring for Lucy. (For those who can’t read between the lines, they went out in between – otherwise he’d be taking one hell of a punt).
She moved with him to Hong Kong after graduating for ‘a year’, which has now turned treacherously closer to two. Luckily they are moving back here for good to get married in April, so I’m counting down the days until she’s back within prattling distance.
[...] hit the earth with a dull thud after best friend Lucy’s hen weekend, the organisation and execution of which turned out to be an excellent diversion from [...]