An old friend

On Thursday night I caught up with an old, old friend. We lost each other years ago, but thanks to facebook reconnected a while back and discovered we both lived in Sydney. So, Thursday night was the big moment, after years and years. Here is one of the earliest photos I can find of the two of us.

You might well be wondering ‘but where is Ali and who is that boy?’ when, sadly, that is me. I blame my mother entirely for the fact that I look like that. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up after my father died, and Mum was pretty good at being frugal so we had some nice “good” clothes, but she kept a tight rein on what we could wear where. I was something of a tomboy and notorious for ripping my things (even jeans always seemed to fall casualty to a wire fence I’d found somewhere to climb over) so this was probably an “old” outfit I’d had to put on for a day at Lake Keepit. My friend Kate’s family, on the other hand, was more renowned for their rather adventurous chaos, and I’d say she wore whatever she could find, which is perhaps why she’s at Lake Keepit (at least I think that’s where we are) in that itsy bitsy, teeny weeny polka dot number.

We had a good night filling in on all the years since, and hopefully it isn’t that many years again till the next time.