Upward Spiral

Friday night, and I'm going out.
In the car, on the way to Sophie's house, I tap my fingers on the steering wheel and bask in the sense of freedom afforded by the darkness, the classical musical, the warmth of the heater and the prospect of the evening ahead.
All the lights are green; I buzz once in the frosty air and Sophie is down in a flash.

Now there are two of us in the car, two bottles of wine, some homemade cakes, a dab of lipstick.
We laugh about something silly that happened earlier, wonder whether I have enough petrol left to get us to Marie's flat and back. Sensibly, I pull in at the next petrol station and pump 10 euros' worth of petrol in. All I have on me is a 10-euro note: the petrol station guy is mighty impressed with the precision of my filling... and Sophie and I have a laugh about that too as we drive off.

Marie greets us with a hug; we proffer our chinking bottles of wine.
She's wearing fluffy slippers, and her new flat is cosy and elegant: we spend a good 20 minutes touring round and exclaiming over the details, though there are only 50 square metres to explore.

Marie is proud of her new corkscrew, but in the course of her bottle-opening demonstration, the cork splits and tiny splinters flutter into the very, very nice wine that is 10 years old and most probably not improved by the addition of bits of cork.
We have a real laugh about that, as we clink glasses.

The hours pass, and sometimes we are all talking at once, all laughing at once, or repeating that same anecdote from 2007 that we all know word for word... that we are embellishing as the years go by, in unspoken agreement.
We laugh about our colleagues: the usual idiosyncracies... the annoying habits that we mimic with affection after the third glass of wine.

Later, we talk about when we were children. We didn't grow up in the same country, of course, didn't watch the same TV programmes or speak the same language... but the way we feel about it all is the same, and that's all that matters.
Then it's 1.30 a.m., and we should really get home to bed.
We chatter our way to the door, chatter through the coat and glove ceremony, chatter our way down the stairs and back to the car and home.

Sophie and Marie and I have worked together, in the same unpretty office, for over seven years.
We see each other practically every working day.
If I think about it, I spend more time with them than anyone else, FH included.
We have had a couple of cross words in seven years: one or two misunderstandings and uncountable hours of conversation and laughter.

There is never a sliver of silence between us.
I never stop to censor what I say in their presence.
They know just about everything that has ever happened to me, and I'm pretty sure I know how they feel about most things.

Sophie and Marie don't know I write a blog. Somehow - through an unavoidable technicality - they got classified into the "colleagues" category in my mind, and I consciously decided not to mix blogging and colleagues.
So the chances are, they'll never read all of the above.

There is absolutely nothing extraordinary about the things we do together, or the conversations we have.
There is absolutely nothing extraordinary about our friendship, in the same way that there is nothing extraordinary about the routine of daily life.
Except that - from time to time, in a flash of lucidity and gratitude - we realise that all this so-called ordinariness may well be the rock that holds us together.

As unbelievable as it sounds, it was only last night that I finally saw what was right in front of my nose, so close I overlooked it for seven years: these are my friends. What would I do without them?

I have spent a lot of energy moaning about the fact my job doesn't provide me with the intellectual stimulation I expect.
But perhaps, in a way, I've been missing the point all along.