Peter now 90 (14) but 15 8 23 only 80 t day 25 1 20

I say friend not advisedly because I never really considered Peter to be my friend and yet from his behaviour these past few years increasingly I am beginning to think of him as a true friend.

He and I met in the Clarion Cycling Club all those years ago in our youths. I'd be 15 at the time and Peter 21 so not a lot of opportunity to become bosom friends with such an enormous age gap. He rode a Claude Butler bike and used to race but since I didn’t there was another reason not to become friends. But we had a common friend in yet an older guy who also used to race, and after a few years this other guy and I left the club in favour of hill walking and rock climbing pursuits, two activities which never took Peter away from his bike.

And after a life time of being acquaintances my ex-climbing partner friend and I became estranged following the death of his common law wife, when our acquaintanceship began to develop more into a friendship perhaps as a result, as they also became estranged so it appeared. Moving country is never conducive to maintaining close friendships and when my ex-climbing partner's wife was dying I just couldn't provide the kind of support he evidently needed, hour-long telephone conversations ending up in the air being no substitute for going round to visit and comfort him, and his depression which ensued became a barrier finally to his retaining anything of his former friendship base.   

My brother and sister were also present on the side-lines in this loop of friendships/acquaintanceships, so as I, as the principal friend was the first to be snubbed my ex-friend appeared to foster his lessor friendships with these other people only to jettison them too eventually which left the three siblings in an acquaintanceship with Peter which on all fronts was developing into friendship.  

And when our mother died sometime after losing this once close friendship I forbade his being invited to her funeral despite their still tenuous contact with him and instead this one time acquaintance somehow got to be invited to attend I believe by our sister.

So it was I got to discuss cycling and other things of common interest with Peter, re-meeting his wife whom one had met previously in the home of the now ex-friend’s parents, and hearing about their children well on the way to becoming adults as our families’ children were. Sad then that the ex-friend couldn’t have also been present, a man unfortunately who always shunned the idea of having children of his own and losing his young partner 13 years his junior to cancer just as she had taken early retirement from her job as head of history at a girls’ school, she more a contemporary to me than to him.

Then my friendship to Peter necessitated annual exchanges of letters and cards at Christmas time and later we became friends on f-b where we get to get to see the occasional pics of other friends or acquaintances one knew a long time ago, and Peter's interest he shares with S his wife for foreign travel has taken them to many places my wife A-E and I have visited, and he has increasingly taken an interest in which hills in Scotland I have been climbing so that all in all you might like to conclude that the once flourishing friendship with one person has been replaced by a new friendship with this third party who was for most of our lives simply an acquaintance. Have a good day everyone as I hope you don’t have to exchange too many old friends for new ones?  

Pics of 1) the Pea-cock butterfly I have also just befriended; and 2) more friends from our local walking club taken just the other evening on an outing to see some of the local bat population…