Fifty years of friendship is a fine thing. It’s like an ancient Constable painting: the colours are possibly a little muted, the canvas is probably a little wrinkled, but the trees are still green, the sky embraces the light behind the clouds, and black oxen are still being driven through the mill pond.

Actually, choosing a Constable painting as a simile works because the landscape is not too different from the countryside around Oxford which is where I have just returned from visiting my old friend, Ruth. Myself, Ruth and Maria shared a flat in Norwich at University back in the day, and then Ruth and I lived together for ten years afterwards in London. Watching and listening to Ruth this weekend was like staring at a much loved painting. Her gesticulations, her patterns, her flows are so familiar to me that I felt very at home in her life even though her every day is so different to mine, living in Cavan.

I was really fortunate with the weather. Oxford was drenched in sunshine and warmth. The glittering leaves of the sixty-foot weeping silver birch outside my bedroom window almost blinded me in the morning. The tulips stood, orange and red, proud and tall, amongst blue bells, sweet rocket, sage as we sat outside for our tea. The may blossom was just beginning to flower as we cycled along the river. In the evening, our meals were full of home grown swiss chard, parsley, sage, garlic, mint and beans. Maria joined us on Saturday, and we walked along the river to The Perch, and I lunched on ox cheeks and for dessert had a ginger pudding with vanilla.

Oxford is a gorgeous mix of country and town. The river walks, the meadows, the parks, the punting, and the landscaped gardens are beautiful. The spires, towers, the golden stone, the churches, colleges, the arched wooden portals where one peeps through and catches glimpses of grassed squares…it all combines to create a feeling of lost romance.

The three of us walked and talked of difficult relationships, our families: children, parents, brothers, sisters as, indeed, we have done for fifty years. I used to think that we would learn how to deal with our emotions, understand them better, learn how to smooth over the issues, but instead, over the years, they have kept on coming with different angles. Now, we have got used to accommodating and living with them but sharing them always helps. Old friends are like poems, they help you to express and understand what you feel.

Our nights of wild drinking and dancing are gone. A glass of wine with our dinner sufficed. In the early evenings, as Ruth cooked the produce from her garden, we shared poems, talked of favourite pod casts, and only touched on our fears about Gaza, Sudan, Trump and artificial intelligence, for these are things we cannot absorb. Then, both exhausted, we retired at 9ish to our beds, to our books, our radio, our wordle puzzles. It was a wonderful time.