FRIENDS INDEED

WE HAVE SOME FRIENDS and you've met them in these pages. Diane and her husband, Roger, are people we've known for over 20 years. We keep in touch by meeting for a meal every week, one of the best ways to keep a friendship alive and nurtured. It used to be dinner at 4 on Friday afternoons, an unusually early hour but one that assured being seated without a wait. I named it The Twilight Supper Club. If you've been reading this blog for years (It used to be named The Retired Printer and the Bookseller before it went belly up due to corruption.....the computer kind), you'll remember when we decided to visit all the restaurants in the area alphabetically. It took us a year and a half, but we did it and learned a lot in the process. For a while we set ourselves the challenge of setting the self timer to photograph all of us. One of the rules was that we had to get the name of the restaurant into the picture. It was fun at the time; and later too much of a hassle.

I started out this morning to tell you of my Saturday morning adventure yesterday, but the blog has a mind of its own and it decided to take a different direction. It's sort of nice to know what I'm going to write about tomorrow and that's rarely the case.

We get together with Diane and Roger on holidays, too, often including Tim and our mutual friend, Fiona. I've known her for nearly 50 years starting when Tim was in the stroller and we used to stand outside her antique shop and watch her change her display windows. I wouldn't take a baby into the store, so she and I corresponded up a storm even though we lived within walking distance. She's the one who talked me into opening a bookshop. I did, ran it for 37 years, sold it 8 years ago and Fiona is still running her antique shop. She's what's known as a better man than I.

I'm not quite as militant as I used to be about getting the group together for a photo and then I'm sorry afterward, because the collection that we do have tells a continuing story. I must get back to doing that. It's worth the effort.

Roger, has had a couple of years dealing with serious health problems......remember when we celebrated last Thanksgiving in the hospital cafeteria and he and Mr.Bob were in physical therapy at the same time? He's doing very well now, able to continue working. He's the one who taught me most of what I know about working on the computer, he being a doctor of computer science.

And Diane is a fiber artist who has written a wonderful book, now out of print and currently is teaching a needlepoint class in her home. I'll tell you a little about their home tomorrow. It's a splendid place and why we're so lucky to have these people as friends, I'll never quite understand. But I give thanks and more thanks as time goes by.

Time to say goodbye to these two friends and God willing, I'll tell you more tomorrow.

"Books and friends should be few but good."