When I was younger I didn't have many friends, and those friendships I had were fickle things that were made and broken between the bell for lunchtime. As got older I started to realise people who only wanted to talk to you because you had salt and vinegar crisps in your packed lunch aren't really friends. I wanted people to talk to people who cared about the things I cared about. I started to make some real friends. It was when I went away to university that I really started to make proper friends. Suddenly I was surrounded by people who didn't know that my dad was the sex ed teacher. (Nothing is more certain to make a shy young girl blush, than having to sit in a roomful of people while her dad talks about SEX!) My family has a tradition when it comes to making friends. The idea is simple: making friends is difficult, so why complicate matters further by having to learn new names? Find people who have the same name as yourself and then just try to remember your own name. My dad is the expert at this, having 5 good friends all called Dave. My poor mum on the other hand has yet to find a single Wendy and has to make do with people with different names. She has coped admirably and calls people by any name that pops into her head. Fate shone favourably upon me. After an emotional train journey spent struggling with bags I found myself alone in the kitchen of my new halls of residence. My mum, obviously realising the difficulty in finding one's name sake, had packed me off with a packet of chocolate biscuits to help break the ice and make friends. I was standing looking at them wondering where I should put them when in walked a fellow Rachel. We were destined to become friends. Four years later, we sat on the beach, picking up pebbles giggling at the idea of her ever living in London, nervously promising that we would stay in touch. A life time since the crisp based friendships I had once had but I was scared. Friendships are fragile things aren't they? Lately I am realising that they are not. People from my past who I thought would have forgotten me long ago have reappeared. Friends I thought were gone from my life, are back, bringing a smile to my face. True friendship, isn't killed by little things like distance, or time. In a day and a half, I will go to see my friend who I now can't imagine not living London. I can't imagine that she would ever leave my life completely. And I can't imagine that there will ever be a time when I'm not so excited to see her. I mean she talks to me when I don't even have any crisps. Take Care, Rachel _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+