Great Friends - in every sense

With friends, we have been so lucky: new ones, known for less than a year, who treated us as family whilst living in their house for so much longer than expected, and old ones, known for 40 years, who welcome us whenever we are in a position to visit. The former, of course, were Lee and Deborah in Fairfield to whom previous recent posts refer. The latter is Midge, the Maine Midge, whom we first met on a Himalayan trek with her late husband Vic 40 years ago and have visited back and forth over the years since that first meeting in Heathrow Airport on our way to Nepal.  Our ages too are widely disparate, being 15 years older than the former, and 15 years younger than the latter. So it is clear that neither age nor duration of friendship is of consequence when values, attitudes, likes and dislikes are shared. The trick is to have the luck to meet such people in the first place, and then to form a mutual bond...

Visiting Midge in Maine again this year has been great. Arriving last Thursday afternoon (20 June), we stayed 3 days with her having left Follyfin on a mooring buoy at the Dolphin Marina in Potts Harbout, Harpswell. Her home is filled with photographs - Vic was a talented photographer - and mementos of past travels, notably the Himalayan trip. So it was delightful to be able to reminisce over our shared experience.

I particularly liked seeing again the two large photograph albums which Vic and Midge diligently put together with diary notes and captions after the trek - something we have yet (if ever?) to do.

Apart from long chats and lots of laughs, we enjoyed excellent beer and pizza in Bath, an outdoor concert from the Bath Municipal Band (Midge’s daughter Linda plays the flute),

a rainy day picnic at Head Beach, delicious steamers (clams) at Cameron’s restaurant and the best lobster rolls at Erica’s lobster shack near where Follyfin was waiting for us on Sunday afternoon. What a lovely and memorable visit it was, albeit sad to leave Midge again - until the next time.

Best of friends