Renewing Friendship

Today was a day of rest for me. I laid around the apartment reading the newspapers and catching up on Twitter goss in the early morning while Chris was writing, and then as luck would have it, my friend from my teaching days, Susanne Scott, a former Novocastrian, was free for coffee.

Susanne and I go back to my St Philips teaching days. Neither of us have great memories of those years in that workplace, although obviously some. The work ethic of a fundamentalist school is not great. I describe it is some detail in a book I'm hoping to get published, so hang on to your horses till then.

But, Susanne and I hit off straight away. We are both musos, she, voice, and me piano. Susanne won Gordon Boyd's 'Showcase' way back when. And we both taught English together at St Philips. We also put on the school's first ever musical; an effort that was both enjoyable and incredibly draining. And finally, back in my churchy days, Susanne and I did a series of tv commercials for NBN 3 for the Combined Churches crowd.

Today, we met at Victoria Station and over a few coffees and a tasty pastry each, we caught up, reminisced, mentioned this one and that one, and chatted about the future. Wonderful. While there, her daughter, whom I taught for a short time, rang to tell us that she had found the audio to the NBN 3 Earthquake Anniversary show where Susanne and I did the Via Dolorosa - the way of suffering. Georgina sent through the audio and we listened to part of it at the table. I've got to tell you, it was good. Susanne has a beautiful voice and I played pretty good piano. She reminded me that we recorded it at the studio in one take. I had forgotten.

Home in the afternoon and a relax, before Chris and I went out, in fact back to Victoria, to have dinner out. Fabulous meal. After it, we strolled down to Buckingham Palace just down the road on a post-prandial and joined various gatherings on the Victoria Monument, the great giant statue of Queen Victoria with golden angel atop in front of the Palace. Just next to the inscription below the old broad, 'Victoria Regina Imperatrix', we had a kiss right under the golden angel to show our love is the equal of anyone else's and that the homophobic values of her Empire were rubbish. And a nice kiss it was too 😊

A lovely day.Read more