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Friday, November 07, 2008, 00:15
With the distance between us suddenly, thrillingly, reduced to nothing, we hugged, we stepped back, and we looked into each other’s faces. "You look exactly as I expected you to," I exclaimed. "Exactly!"
Lottie, smilingly broadly, said: "You do too, except your eyes are more blue than I thought they’d be."
And we just carried on from there. Communicating has never been a problem for us, as all our missives testify, but actually speaking and listening was such an extraordinary novelty.
As I wrote here last week, when I was still full of excited anticipation, Lottie and I first hooked up when we were horse-mad eight-year-olds through the penpal columns of Pony magazine. All the ups and downs of our respective lives have been shared ever since, but it was still surprising to discover little things about each other that had not been revealed through the years of correspondence. For instance, neither of us drinks normal tea: liquorice tea is my current favourite – and, to my amazement, it is Lottie’s too. I wonder what the odds might have been on such a coincidence.
Meeting up with this lovely person who I have known, yet not known, all these years, will definitely go down as one of the great highlights of 2008. It didn’t, as we both slightly feared, break any spell or make us feel differently about continuing our correspondence and we will carry on in the same old way as soon as Lottie is reunited with her laptop in faraway Yorkshire.
The miles between us are nothing compared with the distance between another couple of long-term penfriends – Teresa, in Thornford, near Sherborne, and Margie in Canada. Teresa has written to tell me that the two of them have arranged to meet up next March, in the year they will both be 60, a mere 48 years after they first became penpals.
Their friendship started through an arrangement at Teresa’s school in Swindon. She recalls: "We wrote regularly for a few years and as things happen like boys and work we lost touch. But 10 years ago I found Margie’s address again, and because in Canada people do not move around as much as we do, I dropped a line in the post to ask if anyone knew of Margie or her family.
"Out of the blue three months later I had a letter from Margie. I was so surprised. We
have been in touch ever since, first by letter and then via email. We have learnt about
our lives, sent photos and also had a chat or two over the phone."
Because Margie suffers from MS she travels from Ontario to spend each winter in Florida, so that’s where the pair are going to get together. "My tickets and travel are now booked. We are both so excited," Teresa says. "It is like a dream. I wonder how many people can say that they are meeting a long-lasting friend for the first time!"
Teresa also makes the point that it was such a different world when she and Margie – and indeed when Lottie and I – first started getting to know each other.
For my part I know that even though the world is virtually standing on its head compared with how it was then, there are still few things better than a good friend and a good letter – especially now I’ve actually seen who it is I’m writing to.
If you would like to contact me, please write to sallyhill@rocketmail.com
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