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"How long are we friends?” I asked.
“I dunno 33, 34 years,” my friend Joan replied. Her 10-year-old daughter looked up from the table, her eyes wide in disbelief!
We met when Joan’s mother brought her three little girls to our house to have dresses made by my mother, the seamstress.
Even before that, my grandfather travelled the farms of Tipperary with her grandfather, who was the vet in Mullinahone, testing cattle and sipping whiskey. They were great friends, as we are now and as are our older sisters. Friendships can be a strange thing, built on shared interests and experiences; love, loss, time and trust.
With Brexit dominating much column space, I fear for our relationship with our closest neighbour, biggest trading partner and, in the more recent past, friend.
Yes we are friends and yes we rely on each other, but 92% of the Irish population puts a very high value on staying within the big group too – strength in numbers
Last November Tánaiste Simon Coveney, when welcoming UK Minister for the cabinet office, David Lidington, called out the importance of the friendship between the two countries in a tweet: “Strong UK/Irish friendship, trust and co-operation more important than ever. Legacy, security, cooperation, east-west relations and Northern Ireland political stability all on agenda.”
Some of the comments made in the past week about Ireland throwing in the towel with the UK show a real lack of understanding as to the history of this friendship with our neighbours.
Yes we are friends and yes we rely on each other, but 92% of the Irish population puts a very high value on staying within the big group too – strength in numbers.
I had the great pleasure of experiencing many examples of Ireland’s greatest friendships at the judging of our Fisherman’s Friend competition a few weeks back. I sat at lunch with a pair of the finalists, Sean and Marie.
Celebrating his 80th birthday soon, Sean was just back from India, a journey he has made every year for the last 14 doing charitable work. However, it was the pride that was so evident in his wife that struck me.
Her father wants to immediately take action about any little thing that upsets her but I don’t think that we can do that
They had a fabulous banter between them and a lifetime of stories to tell. The competition winners, Neala and Anna Duffy, share the special bond of sister friendship and they remind me of my two.
My five-year-old sometimes comes home from school and when asked how the day went, there is a sad reply of “such and such wouldn’t let me play or such and such said mean things”. She asks a lot of questions and is quite the deep thinker. I sometimes realise that a question asked a few days prior which seemed quite harmless was actually a nagging trouble for her.
I can hear sometimes in her questions that she is trying to work out in her head something that some little friend in school said to her.
Her father wants to immediately take action about any little thing that upsets her but I don’t think that we can do that. She must work out for herself who her friends are and experience and disappointment form a vital part of that.
I will, however, be glad when the less-overthinking-more-action younger sister starts in September. After all, strength in numbers!
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