Gadding about

I rarely go out. The discipline and practise of simplicity and frugality confer many benefits, among them the quietness of a secluded life. I don't delude myself that my days resemble monastic life, but undoubtedly there are certain similarities.

However, I have been out to a concert, not once but two Saturdays in a row! My very darling and indulgent husband paid for our tickets, both times.

The first concert was staged by a member of our chapel congregation, drawing together the village choir, a local band and some local children (including my wild grandchildren) to perform songs from the show Joseph. The event was cheerful and good-humoured, well-attended by an encouraging audience who applauded with enthusiasm and obeyed when instructed to join in. A happy occasion, the result of several weeks' very hard work (not mine — I only went to see the performance).

Then, the following week I went out again, once more to see local performers, grown-ups this time, united by a love for opera. 

I enjoyed the music, and it was an interesting evening for other reasons beside. Evening dresses had to be sourced by the performers, some of whom were more joggers and t-shirt people left to themselves, included a dear friend of mine who was in it, and came to tell us all about her adventures in obtaining not only an evening dress but a bra to go underneath it. Her daughter had advised her that her regular choice of a sports bra wouldn't do. My loving husband wisely kept quiet as he underwent this initiation into the complexities of balancing off cup against band to get a good fit. My friend had discovered that, like many women, she had been wearing too large a band and too small a cup for years and years and years; and I was able to recommend to her the trusty Miss Mary of Sweden.

The performers at this particular concert were, for the most part, folk I have known for decades. We have chatted before on the threads of this blog about the curious phenomenon of invisibility, and once again at the concert I experienced its unsettling effects — I don't mind, it isn't unkindly meant, but it does feel strange.

The conductor was at university with me, a good friend of my first husband. When I moved to this town by the sea, he was the first person I knew socially. He invited us to dinner, and came to our home once we had one. We saw him moderately often and were on very friendly terms. When his first marriage sadly ended, we invited him round, and again when he found his lovely second wife. I think you could say we are old friends; except that he doesn't recognise me — doesn't appear even to see me.  

One of the singers in the concert was likewise someone I've known many years. He belonged to a theatre group I welcomed to rehearse in our chapel when I was a Methodist pastor. He and I were never close friends, only acquaintances, but though he has changed his appearance radically since those days — the mop of corkscrew curls has been swapped for a neater cut — I would know him anywhere. But he no longer knows me. 

Sometimes, I realise, people drop you if you are not socially advantageous to them (which I am not, to anyone), and pretend not to know you when they really do. But there are always tells, especially that flicker of the eyes when they recognise you then decide to pretend they haven't. But nothing of that in this instance; I was no more present for those men than the chairs in the row or the darkening windows of the church as night fell. They just looked through me without the slightest hint of recognition, as if I were not there.

The same happened last Sunday when I went to a chapel to preach.  I found my way to the pulpit and began to set out my papers, when the steward discerned from my location that I must be me. She had greeted me courteously when I came in to the building, so I hadn't realised she didn't recognise me until she came through the church to apologise. As always when this happens, the other person feels caught on the back foot and feels the need to explain that this is my fault not theirs. Usually they tell me I've changed my hairstyle, or my weight has fluctuated. This can happen, but I usually recognise them when it's the other way round; they look the same but fatter or thinner, with shorter or longer hair.

It's kind of them to apologise, but unnecessary really — I'm so used to it. I missed my vocation; I should have been a spy.

By contrast, to my surprise and delight, on the occasion I travelled to America to hear Diana Lorence of Innermost House speak at Stony Brook Quaker meeting house in Princeton, New Jersey, when my host for those three days was dear Rebecca, a Friend and an online friend, she recognised me at once.

My flight to New Jersey had been cancelled, and I was anxious to get there before night fell, because it was mid-winter and Rebecca lives down a track in a wood. So I hopped on the next flight that had a seat, which took me to JFK airport instead of Newark Airport where I was meant to be going. It was exciting and quite a challenge finding my way by foot and bus in a country where I'd never been, improvising my way to Penn Station and finding a train. Everything is different in America — the trains, the buses, the rules of the road, the people, and also the officials. American officials take themselves very seriously, but in those days I wore Plain dress, and their behaviour to me was markedly gentle and respectful. Interesting.

I had been assured my phone would work in the United States. It did not. As I wasn't where I was meant to be at all, at the time I should have arrived, I had no way to get in touch with Rebecca except the kindness of strangers, who let me use their phones to update her of my progress. The last call I made was in the station car park at my destination, where an African American sheltering from the snow allowed me to use the last dregs of her battery to tell Rebecca I'd arrived.

And, walking across the wheel ruts in the heaped snow, looking through falling snowflakes, we knew one another at once. I had the happiest time staying in Rebecca's home.

People say, do they not, that internet friendships aren't "real", that to experience "real life" you need to get out and mix with people who are "real". I understand why that seems plausible, but it doesn't match my experience. Friends I've met online have become very dear to me, and I have never been disappointed on those occasions we've found a way to meet in what Buzzfloyd calls "meatspace".

What is real and unreal, what is enduring and what fades, what is as you expected and what is decidedly not, can be surprising at times.