Today I received an email from an old school friend.? Our families had lived a few streets away from each other when we were little and we started school at the same time in the infants at Crowland Road, in Tottenham.? We went right through until we left at age eighteen from Skinners’ Company?s School for Girls.? Seven of us actually went on to secondary school together but I am only still in touch with three others.

The email contained a photo.? It is of our two mums sitting on a beach – almost certainly Westgate-on-Sea, in Kent! – and they look so happy it brought tears to my eyes.

They were such very good friends and that showed on both their faces.

I have vivid memories of the close friends my mother had.? Some were from way back, when she was a slip of a girl, and others more recent.? It is inevitable that there will be some friendships made at the school gate but she had only two firm ones and, of those two, this was the closest.? It was rare that mum wasn’t at home at lunchtime or when I arrived back from school in the afternoon but, if that was the case, this lovely lady was one of the people I was most likely to go to until I was picked up.

My grateful thanks to someone who thought to send me this photo.? It has stirred up memories that had lain dormant – happy memories, that I am now glad to relive.