Guest Blog on the Nature of Enduring Friendship - Ros Durdant-Hollamby

From Ros Durdant-Hollamby - who spoke recently on friendship at my celebration of the theme.

Ros Hollamby

"We'll be friends forever, won't we Pooh?" asked Piglet. "Even longer" Pooh answered.

Friendship, according to one quote I found, isn’t about who you’ve known the longest – it’s about who came, and never left your side.Life and friendship, friendship and life, the two are inextricably bound together and it’s hard to know where one starts and the other ends. 

Friendship is born C S Lewis says at the moment one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one’ It’s very reassuring isn’t it to find other people who share our quirky habits? 

My husband loves it when he finds someone else who likes peanut butter and jam on toast or who takes their socks off whilst watching the television! In other words friendship starts when something clicks - when we make a connection with someone, a connection that somehow binds us to them.


How many of you have ever read some of the Wilbur Smith novels about South Africa? One of the things that struck me about the native tribes was their way of greeting each other. 

Instead of saying hello like we do they say ‘I see you’ and the other responds ‘I am here’. There is nothing casual about this greeting and it demands a real response. I think we all crave those words,’ I see you’ because they make us feel valued. They are our call to community and give us a sense of belonging.But sadly not every time we say to our friends ‘I see you’ do they respond ‘I am here.’ 

I’ve had one or two friends who have gone through some very difficult times recently and each one has said to me, “You really get to know who your true friends are when you’re going through bad times.” They are the ones who come and never leave your side.

I feel I have been blessed with some really amazing friends in my life and I think as I get older I rely on my friends more and more. They’re not an optional extra but an essential part of my life. One of them gave me
these words recently.

"Friends are like stars, you don't have to see them to know that they are there.I have learned that as I share my vulnerabilities and hear theirs it allows me to heal and become more fully myself." 

It’s a big risk to let someone else into the most painful and private parts of ourselves, to let down the mask and stop the pretence. So I started to think about what makes a true friend.

A friend for me has to be someone I can be myself around, someone I don’t have to pretend with, and someone I know wont judge me, or point the finger if I’m wrong. Someone I can trust with confidences. Someone who will love me unconditionally, hug me when I need it, or wipe away my tears. But someone who will also tell me the truth when I need to hear it and someone whose company at times goes beyond words and touches my heart.

As Henri Nouwen says - ‘When we honestly ask ourselves which people in
our lives mean the most to us, we often find it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain, and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.’ - Henri Nouwen (author, priest & theologian.)

Friendship for me is ultimately about laying myself down for someone else because I love them. ‘greater love has no man than he lay down his life for a friend.’ This is the extreme version granted, but love is at the root of all friendship and it has to be agape love, selfless love, unconditional love, not stifling, possessive or controlling love if we want our friendships to be healthy and grow.

As the Bard himself, William Shakespeare said -

‘A friend is the one that knows you as you are,
understands where you have been, accepts what
you have become, and still, gently allows you to
grow.’

But as we all know too well friendships don’t just happen, we have to work at them. We have to hang on in there and work at staying connected It’s all too easy to become distracted, too busy or too tired to be there for them or simply take them and their presence in our lives for granted. We learn that as we give out in friendship we are blessed in that giving because we become part of the glue that helps to hold a life together, which is a real privilege and very special.

Carole and I have been friends through some difficult and painful times over the years and we have also shared and celebrated the happy and exciting times.We’ve connected on many levels as we’ve laughed and cried sometimes at the most random of things.

Anais Nin wrote - 'Each friend represents a world to us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.’

Carole and I have known each other since we were 11! Secondary school was a whole new world to both of us, as we were to each other! We met on the first day in September as we were in the same class.We talked endlessly, scribbled notes to each other during lessons, usually about boys or what we were doing after school, did French verse speaking and school poetry recitals, French and German Exchanges,shared clothes, dreams and because of Carole I met my husband on a blind date!


We both got a Saturday job in Freeman Hardy & Willis, (it doesn’t exist anymore) a shoe shop in Tonbridge in Kent where we both grew up. The manager, Mr Sidway, loved us, as he thought that we were
such lovely and reliable girls!! He put us in charge of the men’s department, which was a definite mistake as we were upstairs and he couldn’t keep an eye on us. 

Apart from the steady flow of young men who would sometimes ask us out, Carole used to keep me amused for hours. She would decide what accent she was going to use and then serve whoever came into the shop inthat accent. If I heard ‘Johnny you’re smelly’ under her breath I knew we were in for a Scottish accent! I couldn’t keep a straight face in front of her so I would disappear out the back with the shoes and cry with laughter! She also sometimes found herself a pair of men’s shoes, invariably far too big for her, put them on and then serve the next customer in them. It certainly helped pass the time and I laughed until my sides ached. Indeed I laughed out loud as I was writing this as the memories came flooding back! We did actually sell lots of shoes too! 

Our friendship has stood the test of time and has moved on through the different phases of our lives.In an ideal world all our friendships would last and grow but in reality we come to realise that our lives are peppered with deaths and resurrections. For all kinds of reasons or sometimes no real reason at all except perhaps circumstances we let go of a friend or a project we are let go, cast aside and it hurts. But although the pain and uncertainty is hard to live with we discover that there are new joys and exciting new opportunities waiting for us around the corner, or even just next door!

Carole has moved in to her new studio at The Granary, and a new season in her life to bake fresh bread (metaphorically speaking of course!) and we look
forward to the wonderful smell of it baking , which will draw new people and projects to this space, and of course hungry people, new audiences, eager to eat it and share it fresh from the oven! I wish her well with Jasmine Street.



Editor's Note:

Many thanks for this Ros - oh and by the way I just bought a breadmaker from ebay for £10 - thanks to your words I have decided to start baking bread in my studio to share with people coming in for a chat and to develop a new idea! Going to try it out tomorrow for the first time - fancy the smell mostly!