The world turns

After returning from the forest, the rain cleared.

My best friend from my childhood, whom I met on my first day of secondary school at the age of eleven, was visiting Bristol. We haven't seen each other for a year of so, but we always get on. He was here to deposit his daughter at the University. Things change. It's 35 years since I arrived here from the frozen North, but I was by myself with just a trunkful of luggage. Now it's Margot's turn to settle in Bristol.

Alastair has changed, as we all have, but he's recognisable as the boy he was. He's still lean and craggy, long-legged and self-deprecatory. His wife is similarly tall, slender & good-looking. She's French, although she moved to England when she was twenty and has never really returned home. Due to a rushed marriage in Uganda and a reluctance by the French to recognise any but their own interpretation of reality, they are legally married everywhere in the world, except in France. Their daughter is beautiful in a model-ish way: leggy and skinny and wide-eyed. And very bright.

We met them for coffee, talked and walked around the prettiest tourist parts of Clifton, then returned them all to Margot's new hall of residence - the best in Bristol. Then Moonface & I strolled home in bright cool sunlight.