“We are all travellers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend”

The first thing I need to tell you about my best friend is that I love her.

She is one of those quiet peaceful sorts of women; full of inner peace and calm. She is a couple of years older than me and I met her indirectly through work and then coincidentally we became neighbours.

She is a wonderful person; funny, kind thoughtful, generous, a good cook, loving, makes a good cup of tea, revolting coffee, she eats chocolate in the car when she thinks no one will see her, she has smelly feet, beautiful skin, she lets me borrow her slippers when my feet are cold, and has even put the heat on when I have visited her in the summer, just because I am cold.

She will walk with me for miles saying nothing, when there is nothing to be said, but can talk a hind leg off a donkey.

She has passed tissues when I have sat at her table and sobbed,  and not asked me why. She has put her hand out and taken my snotty tissues and thrown them in the bin without even wincing. She has held my hair when I have been bent over the toilet bowl throwing up from a virus.

She has looked after my children, fed me when I have been broke, she has picked me up from the airport at silly o'clock in the morning, she has fetched me when my car has broken down.She has got my washing in when its raining if she has got home before me.

We have laughed together until we almost peed out pants, we have cried together at the death of her father in law, we have danced drunkenly in her garden singing bad 80's songs, we have lain on the glass at midnight on Mid Summer's Eve and looked at the starts together and then changed our minds and gone in for a "nice cup of tea" because we are far too old and soft to lie out in the cold.

We have cooked together and shared wonderful meals, we have looked at the fruit bowl and then eaten chocolate biscuits instead. We have gone shopping together for hours and bought nothing, we have read the same book a world apart and emailed each other excitedly about it, we have fallen asleep on the sofa together from sheer exhaustion, helped each other in those difficult moments in our lives.

We have walked literally thousands of miles together over the years and a million miles in life's journey together.

She is my best friend and I love her daughter like one of my own and...her husband is not too bad either (but I don't love him...that would just be too weird...well I do , but NOT like that ).

I can't wait to see her.