Tuesday 9 December 2014

Friendship

Family doesn't feature as large in my life as it does for most people - largely because I haven't got one!  I've never married and my only sister died four years ago leaving just one son who now lives in Belgium

But I delight in my friends.  Friendship is one of the great pleasures of life which we can have without major expenditure.

Around Christmas time I think a lot about my friends.  Cards arrive, many with letters inside.  It's fashionable to deride the round robin letter but I love 'em.  Most people write their basic letter and then add a personalised note on the bottom and that way I hear about the grandchildren of people whom I first knew over forty years ago.  No-one would want to write as many individual letters or if they did, they would just be scant notes.

So my frugal pleasure today is friendship, especially those friends I have had for yonks and the news of whose lives plops through my letterbox at this time of year.

4 comments:

  1. That is so lovely. I suppose the saying 'you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family' springs to mind. I live near close family but we don't live in each other's pockets. We see each other every few months for a catch up. We text or whatsapp from time to time. I too look forward to those letters inside the Christmas cards from friends far away. The news is not always happy but it is gratefully received.

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  2. In the last year and a half I have come to a new appreciation of friends and it is sometimes surprising who those friends turn out to be. My family will always be first and foremost to me but the friendships I have rekindled as well as new ones are a very close second. I always had a very close family so the need for friends wasn't so great but in the past few months I have learned how really important they are -- sometimes more important. Lovely post, Mary.

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  3. I am enjoying your list of frugal pleasures! There are so many in life, yet commercialism has made great attempts to blind us to so many simple blessings. Oh, and I loved the bird photos. Your Goldfinch is so striking, and quite different than our American Goldfinch (although ours is pretty too!)

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    1. Somehow it hadn't really occurred to me that each region will have its own garden birds - a pleasure that's the same everywhere but different everywhere as well

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