HONESTLY WE ARE JUST GOOD FRIENDS!

Fancy some Fish and Chips on Friday?  he typed.   That would be lovely, I typed back.

We don’t actually talk very often, but we type a lot to each other.  Sometimes we watch whole programmes on the telly together too, whilst sitting miles apart. Yes I know, we should get out more but honestly, we are just good friends.

The exchanges are fairly succinct.  Celebrity MasterChef, for example, is accompanied by  ‘that looks like shite,  or ’not enough jus with the lamb’  and ‘shovel it in Greg’………..highbrow stuff.

Then, in the middle of our ‘conversation,’ we both nod off on our respective sofa’s, about 20 miles apart until the next time. 

I first knew Dicky in the mid 80’s when he was my window cleaner.  He was a handsome bugger, and he came with his own set of ladders. He could charm the birds off the trees and into his bed.

He was and still is, a cheeky chap, and although he will deny it, he had the pleasure of many a young lady, back in the day. But I wasn’t one of them.

Damn it.       DICKY DOWNES

Whilst we’ve always kept in touch, to be fair, we don’t actually see each other very often. I think it’s been oh at least twice this year, and possible twice last year.

But strangely enough, we are still quite close. I’d trust this man with my life, he is a very special bloke.

Over the last 30 odd years, we’ve flirted with the idea of becoming a bit more of an item. We’ve pipe dreamed about going here and there, doing this and that, and sometimes even the other.

But it’s never happened and never will.  Our moment has passed, and we both know it.

Nope we are just good friends, always have been, always will be.  However, it is quite surreal that by the power of Facebook, a simple selfie, and a fairly innocent throwaway line resulted in us becoming engaged by proxy, accompanied by many MANY messages of congratulations, wishes of happiness and that old chestnut, ‘Shall I buy a new hat’.     champagne

In fact, it got so out of control, that my ‘just good friend’ had to issue a statement of denial!

Honestly, if we’d been on Twitter, we’d have been trending.

It went something like this.

We took a nice leisurely drive to West Mersea. It wasn’t our first destination of choice, but it being a nice sunny Friday evening, the world and his wife decided to cause a bit of a kerfuffle on the A12, and so, as older people do, we decided to play it safe and take the back roads to a more familiar Essex backwater.

We talked our way onto a reserved table, promising not to be long, and did indeed have two very large portions of Skate and Chips, washed down with a bottle of pretty decent Merlot.

At the agreed hour, we adjourned to a bench outside, overlooking the water and it was there that the confusion selfie was snapped.

It was as they say, all over in a flash, and fed onto Facebook in seconds with the cryptic tag line of

30 years later………we didn’t want to rush things.

Then, my companion put his phone away, we finished our bottle of wine, and had a little stroll round, watched a few boats bobbing about and some seagulls swimming, and then went home for a nice cup of tea. We know how to live.

Yes, by 10.30, we were both yawning, the excitement had all been too much. Bed, and a good book was calling us.  That’ll be separate beds, and separate books.  Just to be clear.

However, while we were taking the scenic route back home, our picture had gone a tad ‘viral’ amongst the man Dicky’s Facebook friends.

And so by Saturday morning, 229 people had kindly liked our picture, and there were 80 congratulatory messages from people possibly all hoping for an invite to a wedding that wasn’t going to take place.

It was quite cheering to know that so many people approved of our unreal relationship, even Dicky’s son succinctly wrote that I was ‘fit’.

Thank you to my nearly stepson. Nice one.

DICKY AND ME MERSEA!

However, much as we hated to disappoint everyone, not to mention dismissing the possibility of many gorgeous gifts, (and maybe even shedloads of money), it would have been rude and unkind to have misled all those potential wedding guests any longer, and so apologies for confusion were hastily added to the hundreds of comments and we became quietly un-betrothed.

Sadly, in 30 years of friendship that was the first picture, of Dicky and I  ‘togevver’, I’m guessing it will probably be the last!

Still it was nice while it lasted!

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