Intimacy and friendship and daily life

A short post about time

Me in Valencia, Spain last week. The text behind me translates (roughly) as: “We allow people to see us, although sometimes it is more risky than hiding.”

Hello! Woah… it’s the middle of the year already and it’s got me thinking about time. This is going to be a short-ish post because I’m feeling knackered.

Chatting over dinner with a friend the other day, I had the thought that I don’t really know what’s going on for people unless I understand a little about how they spend their time, what their everyday existence is really like.

I might get the small-slice version of their life, a ‘what are you up to at the moment’ kind of conversation.

Your daily life or routine might feel dull or mundane, but how someone spends their time is literally the stuff of life.

But when was the last time you asked a friend ‘how do you spend your time every day?’

You’re much more likely to say ‘how are you?’ ‘are you going away this summer?’ or ‘what plans do you have?’.

These conversations are often about the future, not about the moments in their day that might seem small but can be significant.

I have sometime assumed that friends who have partners and/or children have lives filled with busy-ness and noises and schedules and online supermarket shopping and drop offs and pick-ups and plans and clubs and classes.

And while this may be true to an extent, they also have quiet times, where they’re working in the same spaces where some of the noise happens, and it feels like one extreme to the other.

When you meet a friend, there is a joy in seeing them in the flesh, and you get snippets or highlights of their lives, the peak highs or lows.

But it’s the in-between bits where most of life happens, the moments we might think are dull but can give us important information about our friends or family. And to know about these things, I think, is what brings intimacy to relationships.

I also don’t think you can ever really know a person unless you are in their home and you see how they make a cup of tea, how long they squeeze the bag for, what they have printed on their mugs, the fact that they have specific indoor shoes (mine are fur-lined ballet shoe slippers from Next that are machine washable and I’m wearing them now), that they live in a comfortable mess and don’t put out special soap or hand towels because you’re visiting - or indeed that their home is immaculate and everything matches.

So, to give you a snapshot of me, right now, in this moment (as I write it’s Friday night at 8.08pm): I’m on my faded little blue sofa, a piece of furniture kindly given to me by my mum’s friend Sue when she was selling her home. I’m squished against cushions from Bali, India, a trip my mum took to Zambia and a 1970s blue velvet one from my parents’ home.

The sofa is in my tiny living area, and my feet are up on a chest, which doubles as a coffee table. The chest is one my great grandfather used in World War I, and it sits on a Persian rug he also had during the war.

On the kitchen work surface close by, I can see broccoli and courgettes, which I aimed to put into an omelette for dinner, but I’m too tired to cook so I’ve ordered takeout instead.

And opposite is the fridge, one I procured from Freecycle when I moved here six years ago, not realising that the kitchen had one built-in.

Outside, I can see my garden, where my old bike stands next to pots of tomatoes, pansies, sweet peas and salvia (it’s related to sage and has a little pinky red flower).

There’s also a slightly falling-down fence and a second hand metal table and chairs, plus fake grass (here when I moved) and some bindweed that I need to dig up.

It’s a mix of old, new, inherited and donated, and I guess it shows my personality. There are things that need improving, updates I’ll make and a few tweaks required here and there, but on the whole, I love it.