Not ‘old’ old, you must initially understand. Not ‘old’ in the sense of ‘over the hill’. Not ‘Zimmer frame and tartan blanket on the knees’ old. Just old in the sense of having both done this blogging lark for an unfeasibly long time. Old in the sense that, while 95% of the world’s bloggers have long since packed it in and gone to something better and more current, we are still at it, bashing away.
William
Gallagher was visiting my adopted hometown of Castlebar for indisputably sad
reasons which we won’t go into here. Still, even with a full and trying schedule,
he made a little time to meet up with me for a coffee and, even better, his
lovely wife Angela came too.
This was a
wonderful treat because William and I have been gently propping each other in
blogging and in writing matters generally for what feels like fifteen years. And
mark me on this, if it feels like fifteen years then it’s probably a darned sight
more than that. That’s not to say that we’ve been in each other’s respective ears
or eyelines unremittingly over the past decades. Far from it, really. As is the
nature of well-formed online friendships, one is always nearby but rarely in
the exact same place at the same time. A gentle level of mutual visibility
exists, where small victories are acknowledged, and small failings are mulled-over
and contextualized. Low wattage, perhaps, but providing highly-valuable illumination,
nonetheless.
We met in
Castle Books, which has long been a favorite place of mine, and which has become
even more favoured now that they have a beautiful new refurbished shop with a
cosy coffee place up on the mezzanine. It’s great for many reasons, not least because
if you’re up there with your flat white and you feel an overwhelming need to
have a book (as I often do) then they will sell you one down on the ground floor
as quick as you like. I won’t go on about it but, next time you’re in Castlebar,
go to Castle Books. This is not sponsored content.
Did I say
we’d never met before? We’d never met before. Years and years of intermittent support
and interaction but no face-to-face. These circumstances are not unusual for denizens
of that social media thing. It happens, we make the best if it. But it is nice
to meet up, if the circumstances align to allow that and that was certainly the
case in this case. Certainly, in my case, I found William to be exactly the
person I thought he would be and that, right there, is a compliment. People are
always a little different, in some subtle way, to what you expect. The only
thing I can contribute in that respect is that William is taller than one could
rationally expect and Angela gives better hugs than one might righteously hope
for.
The best
part of an hour-and-a-half slipped away without anyone really noticing. I
spilled my coffee, as I often do, and the ladies at the next table, who were
clearly delighted to be convening their own coffee morning, were a pleasant counterpoint
to our own chat.
As I said
to William, my town felt a little different as I walked down to Castle Books to
meet them both. I was seeing it, if only a little bit, through their eyes. I stopped
at a place of worship, casually installed in a retail unit, and inspected the
children’s drawings of Jeus and his gang. The simple drawings were faded and
the sellotape holding them to the inside of the shopfront glass was perishing
and losing its grip. The drawings were charming and reminded me of similar product
we would have made when we were small. The only point to this paragraph is that
I would never have stopped here, having passed it a thousand times, if I was
not in a slightly different frame of mind. If I was ‘looking in on my town from
the outside’ a little. It was an interesting vibe and the town did not disappoint.
I was still pleased with it, even as a momentarily transformed visitor.
Although
the subjects of cabbages and kings did not arise, our conversation covered many
things and flowed along easily and warmly. Then, as Tom Paxton once wrote (an
outrageously obtuse reference, this) ‘all too soon, it was time to go.” We
walked to the corner together and suddenly, once again, our paths led off in
different directions.
I proposed
a scenario where we might meet again in years to come and, for me at least, it
is a seductive idea which I would naturally hope comes to pass. It will take
some doing but we’ll see.
Thanks for
taking the time, William and Angela. It was truly lovely to meet up. We might fear that we might somehow disappoint in person after years of virtual
contact but, to reuse a recently used phrase, that was certainly not the case
in this case.
In fact, it
was great.
2 comments:
Awwww....
I haven't met many of the friends I've made online in the real world; the best thing about the Internet is also the worst. That said I've also been somewhat reluctant to burst the bubble. I can sit for ten minutes considering and then concocting the next sentence (and often do) and I like that. I feel I jabber in person accutely aware of the time constraints, feeling the need to make every second count. I said of a friend once that she was the kind of person I'd love to meet every now and then for a hug. Probably one less than the ideal twenty seconds but for at least one lasting the recommended minimum of six. But, yeah. We never had any problem talking—that wasn't the thing—but we never hugged. Okay, once, the day she got married and a lot was said in that five or six seconds of silence. I always go away from exchanges like the one you describe here, analyse them into the ground and always but always find myself disappointed in my performance. (I had "behaviour" but "performance" hits the nail on the head.) I try too hard. But if you ever fancy meeting up in some godforsaken terminus for a six-to-twenty second manly embrace, I'm game.
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