Party

Whether you’re eager or reluctant, one of the best things about leaving anywhere is the party that accompanies the event. Tonight was no exception.

The village pub was the venue, “David & Karen’s Leaving Drinks & Pizza” was the celebration and our closest friends from Steeple Morden were to be our guests. And how wonderful it was to see so many of those friends there to wish us ‘bon voyage’ on this bitterly cold January evening: Alison & Steve of course – our likeminded friends who had moved to the village to improve their quality of life; Andy & Ange - our skiing partners for Val d’Isere; Helen - who would be living at our house and looking after our cats whilst we were away on our travels; Steve & Clare; Fraser, Alison, Eleanor & Lucy; Vicky & Simon; Peter & Chris; Andy and Jane. “Raise a glass”, Karen toasted, “to our absent friends: Becky in Fontainebleau; Susan in Cyprus; Sandra & Alan in Mirabel and Dave & Linda, who are tucked up in bed suffering from that awful flu bug that is going around”. We raised our glasses and drank.

That the venue was the Waggon & Horses was fitting in many ways – after all it was in this very pub, just 7 months ago that Karen and I had hatched our travel plans over a fabulous Sunday Lunch. As I reflected, it occurred to me that the one thing that neither Karen nor I had considered was how we would be feeling tonight. For the past 6 years we had procrastinated over our travel plans; always finding reasons ‘not to do it right now’. Eventually, we had narrowed our concerns down to one – our cats: Huffkin and Chudleigh – but with Helen living at our house and Alison & Steve taking care of everything else, even that objection had melted away.

However, tonight, we realised that we had forgotten to put “How much we will miss our close friends” on to that list of concerns. The truth was, for the majority of those six years, it probably wasn’t an issue to us. But since we moved to Steeple Morden things had changed: In this idyllic village we had been lucky enough to meet some of the nicest people you could every hope to meet and as a consequence, in a relatively short period of time, we had forged some of the strongest friendships that Karen and I had ever had. And tonight it dawned on me – we were going to miss these people immensely!

So with a tear in my eye and a lump in my throat, I hugged our friends goodbye as the evening came to a close and I pondered for a moment, ‘are we doing the right thing’. Absolutely. The great thing about our friends in Steeple Morden is that they are true friends. Whether we were to go away for a week, a month or a year we would return and resume our friendship as if we had never been away.

Karen and I stayed behind at the pub when everybody had left to reflect on our fabulous evening. We drank and toasted “True Friends”.