Of Rose Milk & Veg Puffs

I recently reconnected with two school friends after nearly three decades and we fell straight into conversation as if the intervening years meant nothing. We spoke about everything and anything, laughed and giggled like we used to all those years ago. The three of us went to the same school and in the last two years of school, we attended a tuition class where Maths lessons were strictly incidental. After every lesson, we would regroup at a nearby bakery, slurp teeth-chatteringly sweet, rose milk, bite into lighter-than-air vegetable puffs and set the world to order. We'd talk and talk until it was really dark and I'd get on my bicycle and pedal home.

Our long discussions, arguments and disagreements were wonderfully pointless and supremely unproductive. I don't recall a single scrap of information from those chats but they were the building blocks that made me who I am today. Over the years, I've kept up the habit of meeting with friends to talk about everything under the sun which even prompted a neighbour to once remark that I cannot hold 'light conversations'.

Lately though I'd fallen into a productivity trap. I had not indulged in the luxury of casual conversations without looking at my watch or wondering how I would account for the time spent against my to-do list.

A few weeks ago, I was awarded a Fellowship by Farnham Maltings who informed me that the purse they were giving me was to spend on myself. It was just the cue I was waiting for to buy myself time. Ever since, I have redoubled my efforts to have freewheeling chats with long-pending friends and fellow artists.

Just in the last week or so, I have gone on a walk in the woodlands with a dramaturg friend, had coffee and cake with some mums from my children's school and spent time singing and sharing stories with an ex-boss.

Personally, I find these sort of interactions well worth cultivating. They are good for my well-being and keep me on an even keel. That said, I eschew gossip and instead choose wide-ranging topics to include everything from arts and entertainment to politics and sports. Sometimes stray utterances from distant conversations spark ideas which make their way into something I'm working on at the moment. But that's not why I ask friends out for walks.

These aimless exchanges are like day-dreaming with eyes wide open. It's thinking aloud without censure. It's unshackling the brain from timetables and agendas.

My school friends and I started a Whatsapp group so we can chat more often. And when it came to choosing a name for the group, it was inevitable that we'd name it after the bakery on whose doorstep we'd spent many an evening chitchatting. It would be wrong not to.