Way back when I was at school, we sometimes had people join us who were only with us for a year or a couple of years because their parents were in Cambridge for some reason. It was always nice to welcome new people from different places but one girl who joined us immediately became a friend. I think we were quite naughty (in an innocent way) and probably very silly; the sort of things we did was to swap one shoe, so we each had a brown shoe and a red shoe… and I’m sure there were lots of other things too, which I don’t now remember.
In those days the only way to keep in touch was by letter… and I don’t think we actually ever wrote to each other when she left our school. I’ve often thought about her over the years…
If you can spot me on the back row, you can spot her, standing next tom me – she must have been standing on a step because she looks taller than me, but in fact we were the same height!
Luckily these days, there are lots of ways of keeping in touch – and also finding people you’ve lost contact with… and so it was with us! We found each other!! We have been writing, and although it is decades since we saw each other (we never met again after she left school) we are just as ‘in tune’ with each other as we ever were.
She is an artist, and I am so excited because she and her brother and sister are having an exhibition in London, and I am going up there on Friday to see it! 
More exciting still, she has been on some travels, and was able to drop by for lunch on her way back to London! Well, it was so lovely to see her and meet her family! I think we just about talked nonstop!
It really is amazing that whatever it was that sparked our friendship all those years ago is still there!
Lois Elsden 