Old Friends

[poliphilo]

 We took our friends from Chicago for a tour of Eastbourne. He's a poet. I published him back in the day when I was joint editor of a small time literary magazine. We met once- about twenty years ago- and since then we've kept in touch by email. What I hadn't known is that he has difficulty walking- which meant I had to rein in my sightseeing plans. Still, we took them on the pier, explained who George Formby was, told them how far it was to France, had lunch in the Crown and Anchor- which is a proper, old-style, unfancied-up pub- and gave them as much of the authentic British seaside experience as could be fitted into five hours. 

Not all our friends are elderly, but most of them are. And many of them are "differently abled". As Art Garfunkel once sang- and maybe still sings though he's way past the marker himself, "How terribly strange to be seventy"...