Basically your friends are not your friends for any particular reason. They are your friends for no particular reason. The job you do, the family you have, the way you vote, the major achievements and blunders of your life, your religious convictions or lack of them, are all somehow set off to one side when the two of you get together.
If you are old friends, you know all those things about each other and a lot more besides, but they are beside the point. Even if you talk about them, they are beside the point. Stripped, humanly speaking, to the bare essentials, you are yourselves the point. The usual distinctions of older-younger, richer-poorer, smarter-dumber, male-female even, cease to matter. You meet with a clean slate every time, and you meet on equal terms. Anything may come of it or nothing may. That doesn't matter either. Only the meeting matters.
(... and if you think my face reminds you of someone, you're not alone - click here)
Doug Fry is such a friend. Some friends are more or less replaceable with other friends. Doug is not. I first met him almost sixty years ago, in 1965, just months after my arrival in what would eventually become my adopted home Australia. We were both keen Youth Hostellers - see here - and while I never stopped still and for the next twenty years travelled the world, I could always count on Doug being there when I returned to Canberra, first in 1969, and again in 1977 and 1979, and finally in 1986 after I had returned permanently from my last posting in Saudi Arabia.
Today's trip to Canberra to renew Padma's passport at the Indonesian embassy was my first visit to the old stamping ground in almost twenty years, and what better way to spend the rest of the day in the nation's capital than to catch up with my longest and oldest friend before old age catches up with both of us. Many, many thanks to Doug and his charming wife Jung Hee for their amazing hospitality and for making this one of the most memorable days I have had in years. Let there be many more memorable meetings before we're both too old to travel.
