Kim

I recently met up for lunch with another old schoolfriend in lovely Blythburgh, a small village on the Blyth estuary - viciously dissected by the A12 (the closest we get to a motorway from London). In fact, Kim is my oldest schoolfriend, and I hadn't seen her for 15 years. Funnily enough, she lives 45 minutes away, with two horses and a husband and acres of soft, sandy land overlooking the sea on a beautiful peninsular further down the coast. Her village is a close-knit one and not very accessible by public transport. It is home to a prison, but one with a slightly broader remit than most, I suspect. This prison is one of the few places where the famous Suffolk Punch heavy horses (also the horse on the Ipswich Town Football Club badge) are bred - at the Hollesley Bay Colony Stud. The prison has always been there in one form or another. In the 19th century, it started out as a Colonial College to train missionaries going to all the pink countries on the map. Then it was a workhouse, and later, an agricultural college, which explains today's funny extra-curricular activity for the Home Office.

Anyway, Kim and I became firm friends at four once I discovered that both our names began with a 'K'. Friends for life, that meant. Though from my perspective at that time it troubled me that whenever we wrote our names she would have finished before I'd even got halfway. I was known as Katherine in those days, you see. And nine letters took forever to write.

So I found out that Kate was short for Katherine, announced the change, and started writing my name just as fast. Who me? Competitive? Yes, largely down to Kim, probably. I do recall wanting to be better than her in absolutely everything: reading, writing, rounders, athletics, climbing, riding bikes, gymnastics badges, brownie badges, swimming, egg and spoon. I know I did piano because she did, though got restless once summer came and gave it up. I'm sure I took up bell-ringing first though, but remember being very impressed that she called herself a campanologist at such a tender age. That was pretty much all that was on offer in my village in the 70s. That and brownies or guides, Sunday school and the choir. And even then my bell-ringing career was very short-lived because I was too light and too small. Standing on a milk crate didn't help, and I soon got fed up with being yanked upwards holding on for dear life as my arms were being wrenched out of their sockets. All in all, Kim and I were pretty evenly matched, though she was by far the more diligent and better behaved, needless to say.

Anyway, that's all water under the bridge, and it was lovely to catch up. A bit strange to go back 30-odd years though.