You Said Something

'On a rooftop in Brooklyn, at one in the morning...
Watching the lights flash, in Manhattan...'

Not just a really lovely PJ Harvey song, but pretty much exactly what I was doing last week.  I was in New York - a brilliant trip, which I will probably bang on about in more detail at some point - specifically, on the roof terrace at the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg.  Drinking a whisky cocktail and looking out across the water to the Empire State Building.

But that wasn't even the best bit.

The best bit was that I was with a girlfriend who I hadn't seen for years.  A proper, close girlfriend - one I truly love, who I have been on holiday with twice and used to hang out with all the time.  This was possibly the first time in my 33 years that I had inadvertently lost touch with such a good friend.

I moved to Brighton; she moved to New York.  We tried to think of the last time we saw each other, and neither of us could for the life of us remember.  At least five years, maybe even closer to 10.  Who knew?  Now she even had a husband I had never met.

We'd exchanged the occasional email over the years, but drifted out of close contact.  Then I let her know that I was going to be in New York and we made vague plans to meet.

And here we were, drinking on a rooftop in Brooklyn, chatting like the old friends we were, like nothing had changed.  And it hadn't, not really.  We had greeted each other with genuine screams and hugs in the middle of the road.  We laughed at the fact that we both still looked so much the same that we could never have had trouble recognising each other.  We talked about new ideas just as much as we reminisced over old memories.  Conversation was easy and fun.  We emailed the next day; I can't wait to see her again in a couple of months.

Rather than being sad that we ended up skipping a few years together, it makes me feel pleasantly reassured about the world, friendship, the passage of time...  She dashed onto a bus with her lovely husband and I waved her off before I disappeared into the subway, safe in the knowledge that nothing can ever change who we really are, PJ Harvey on my headphones.