Olive tree friends

I recall that it was a Thursday morning.  Sunny, enticing, evocative and full of promise.  Certain adventure lay ahead; today had been long-anticipated.  I stood up from breakfast, kissed Ned Nederlander and  De Jongens goodbye, and walked out the door.  As I glided without a care through Amsterdam’s early morning light, I felt quite the elegant, mysterious, self-sufficient woman, and I wondered idly whether passers-by might have thought I bore an uncanny resemblance to Audrey Hepburn, with my Capri pants, ballet flats and jaunty scarf.  In reality I must have reminded them more of Mr Bean, as I wrestled comically with a pull-along suitcase that seemed intent on travelling in the opposite direction to me.  The bumbling likeness would have been strengthened by the maniacal grin on my face as I realised that for once I was not also wrestling two surly adolescents, intent on travelling in the opposite direction to me.

Twenty minutes later my dissenting suitcase and I boarded a train at Amsterdam Centraal, and I sank into my seat. My reading seat for the next few hours.  My thinking seat.  My listen-to-my-own music seat. My do-whatever-I-like seat. My selfish cow seat.  

The train slowly pulled out of the station and I was Audrey again. I cast one last pensive glance over my shoulder at the city in which I knew my family now trudged unwillingly to work and school.  I apologised silently to them for being so excited about leaving them. 

A little over four hours later, I was in the reception area of a quaint little hotel opposite the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris.  I told myself I was a veritable picture of sophisticated European chic. There’s a very real chance, I suspected, that I reminded the rather charming French concierge of Grace Kelly.  He failed to vocalise that thought, but informed me with a knowing smile that “yur friend es waiting fer you in Room Ferty Wern on ze second fler”. I considered swooning, but instead I sashayed to the lift, all independence, style and deportment, under his watchful eye. Sadly, my recalcitrant suitcase didn’t quite make it before the doors closed, and independence, style and deportment met bumbling, uncoordinated fool in a most unpleasant collision. I believe I heard the concierge snort. Grace Kelly disappeared and Manuel from Fawlty Towers took her place.

My suitcase and I made it to Room Ferty Wern, although my composure and self-image lay in tatters on the floor of the poky lift.  The anticipation of the imminent rendezvous and my excitement about the planned events for the coming three days didn’t help matters, and I knocked a little too enthusiastically. The door opened and there she was – my fabulous friend Lisette, all the way from Australia. We shrieked, we hugged, we giggled.  Both Audrey and Grace, if they were ever there, left the room immediately.

Rather bizarrely, Lisette’s husband and children, with whom she’d been chatting when I pounded on the door, watched our reunion via Skype.   They probably thought they were watching a personalised version of Absolutely Fabulous. Clearly bemused, they hung up.  That left Lisette and I channelling Patsy and Eddie.  In no time at all we were celebrating our absolute fabulousness, lunchtime champagne in hand, in a cute brasserie somewhere near Boulevard Saint-Germaine.   We talked animatedly without drawing breath, and laughed with, but mostly at each other, with the easy comfort and ready familiarity of old friends.

There really is nothing like an “old friend” . . . those people with whom you have shared your school lunch breaks or perhaps your first university lecture.  They’ve celebrated your first “real” job with you, waved you off (or joined you) on your first overseas adventure, and welcomed you home again on your return. They’ve run, cycled, climbed, abseiled and paddled with you through life's challenges. They know at least one excruciatingly embarrassing story involving your past (and you know one about them, thereby assuring each other's silence on the matter). Old friends are the people who stood aside and gave you space while you fell in love, but who then stood close and reassuring when it turned out not to really be love after all. They are the ones who assessed when the “keeper” did come along, and then told inappropriate stories at your wedding, and will no doubt do the same at future celebrations.  
To earn an “old friend” badge, people need to have accompanied you on significant life transformations over protracted periods of time.  They may have journeyed with you for example from flagons to bottles, from pizza to degustation menus, from poky renovator’s delight to separate guest room with matching towels.  In Lisette and my case, we were marking a 15 year transition from dodgy backpacker hostel in La Paz to swish boutique hotel in the 5^th arrondissement in Paris.

(Actually, the truth is Lisette has never been a dodgy backpacker hostel kind of girl, and after enduring a night or two of debilitating altitude sickness amidst shonky electrical wiring and poorly-laundered sheets in our shared La Paz accommodation, she moved to a posh hotel - with flowers - on the other side of town and occasionally summoned me to visit her during the subsequent weeks.  Consequently, Lisette’s transition to the 5^th arrondissement was not quite as dramatic as mine, but technically we had shared the journey).

Of course the existence of “old friends” in no way undermines the great value of “new friends” or “old family”, who are essential for a whole range of different reasons.  It’s just that Lisette and I were the first of a bunch of “old friends” to arrive in Paris for a milestone birthday celebration, and they were on my mind.

We returned to the hotel after lunch and were reunited with another “old friend”.  While we’d been out, the hotel staff had somehow managed to fit a third bed into the room, despite our combined knowledge of physics and spatial geometry suggesting this was impossible.  And there we passed a couple of hours; three old friends, literally shoulder-to-shoulder and pillow-to-pillow, re-living past glories, re-telling stories we’d heard a hundred times before, readily sharing current secrets, laughing about nothing in particular and generally marvelling at how amazing it was that we were where we were.  Eventually, we wandered off into the Paris evening together; quite confident that to the outside world we were Juliette Binoche, times three.

Several more “old friends” came together over the next few days.  By the third day, we were a happy group of twelve, including Ned Nederlander and De Jongens, holed up together in a wonderful rambling house. At the centre of the house was an olive tree, planted incongruously in the living room beneath a soaring translucent roof.  I liked that – a universal symbol of peace, longevity, renewal, strength and victory, at the very place where a group of old friends had gathered. None of us mentioned dull foliage, gnarled trunks, dead wood, weathered crowns, or stony ground. Probably just as well.

And at the centre of our gathering of old friends, celebrating her own longevity (and peace, renewal, strength and various victories) was our great mutual friend Marguerite.  She planted herself at the head of the table, beneath a soaring silly hat that was a constant reminder of why we were there. Happy birthday, olive tree friend.

An abundance of cheeses, baguettes, olives, pates, croissants, pastries, coffee, chocolates, apricots and raspberries were shared around our table . Empty champagne bottles piled up and the noise levels beneath the soaring roof seemed to grow at much the same rate. Excursions were undertaken; the local market, the banks of the Seine, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower were the obvious first choices. An unforgettable birthday dinner was shared. Dinner with old friends. 

All of us will long remember the amazing views, ambience, food, wine and company that evening on the river. No doubt, for years to come we will all roar with laughter whenever any of us recounts what Lisette did to that poor waiter - although the details must remain a secret among old friends . . .

Then all too soon it was time to say goodbye, as we have all done many times before, and no doubt will do again. It was time to return to our separate lives in disparate countries, to gather stories for next time we meet, and to start an appropriate detox program. It was time to think about the great value of the olive tree friends in our lives, both established and emerging, and be grateful for them all.  It was time to acknowledge Audrey Hepburn who once wisely noted (perhaps as she hurled a malfunctioning suitcase off a Parisian bridge) that “the best thing to hold onto in life is each other”.