The power of 3

This weekend was a rather pleasant one as weekends go. It could have been due to the weather being fricking glorious and it finally feeling like summer. It could have been due to the fact that it was the first weekend in ages where I didn’t have to log onto a computer and do any work. But it probably has most to do with the fact that my girls were in town! Yep, the holy trinity came together once more to drink, eat and talk utter rubbish.

The weekend began on Friday night, when I met up with some friends of mine who I hadn’t seen for a while. We were drinking cider which is always a bad sign, and the fact that lunch had consisted of a small salad and a banana and dinner had been 2 Nurofen plus should have set alarm bells ringing. Funtimes were had by all though. Especially when I started dancing round the pub to the music in my head. And when I fell off my bar stool several times. And I don’t remember this bit, but apparently I attempted to kiss one of my friends, who I actually have no interest in whatsoever. I don’t know what it is about alcohol that turns me into a lecherous old man. If it wasn’t for the wonderful A, I would never have made it home in one piece. I also have to give props to the two random strangers who stopped me on the tube on the way home to check if I was ok and helped me out. Boris may have stopped drinking on the tube, but as long as the pubs are allowed to serve fools who can barely speak, there will always be louts causing mayhem on the public transport system.

The rest of the weekend was much less drunken in comparison, but it was just divine to have my two most favourite people in the world both in the same room at the same time. We’ve been friends for almost 10 years now, but we’ve only ever lived in the same city for about 2.5 of those years. The second and third years at uni were spent in the same little village, be it Willamette or Keele, but after graduation, the time we’ve spent together has been appallingly little. Not because we were sick of the sight of each other or that we would gauge out each others eyeballs with a rusty spoon if we saw one other, but because of great big sodding oceans getting in the way. The year that I spent in the UK whilst the other two were still living it up in Japan was one of the longest and loneliest that I can remember.

For the past few years, we’ve actually all been in the same country, but hundreds of miles apart. Which might not be such a big deal for some people, but seeing as none of us can drive, it’s not as easy as that. Jobs, lack of money, other commitments and sheer un-organisation has meant that we only actually meet up about 3 or 4 times a year.

We talked about the crapness of having so many people who mean a lot to us not being in the same city or even country. We came up with the idea that when we win the lottery, we would buy a beautiful desert island and build houses for all our friends and families so that we could all live together in one place. (I’m not actually sure how this would happen as just a few minutes earlier, we’d been discussing how none of us even knew how to buy a lottery ticket. The Teacher actually said that they scared her.) I think that’s the one downfall of doing so much travelling and meeting so many incredible people along the way. You inevitably have to leave them. There are people for who I have endless amounts of love and respect, who live on the other side of the world. I know it can be nice to have international friends to visit on vacation, but I would gladly sacrifice the cheap holidays just to have them nearby. Just so I can call them up on a random Wednesday evening and suggest a meet up in the pub to talk about nothing and everything.

I miss not having my friends close by. Which is why I’m counting down the days to when the BFF’s finally see the light and move to London. If not for the culture and the restaurants and the shopping and the endless galleries and the museums, then for friendship, for home made dead moth cocktails and for belly laughs.