Best friends, probably not many, bit of a loner but I have valuable friends, you know the ones! might not see each other or talk for months even years and yet when you meet them you connect straight away and it is though you have been talking daily.

One friend that I would consider a childhood best friend that I have not seen or heard from for many years was a girl named Fay.

We met whilst in hospital, my stay was quite long and she arrived about half way through. From memory Fay had come down with some type of virus and was given medication (some sort of antibiotic - pretty new stuff in those days) and something went wrong and she began to lose her sight.

We were spoilt by the nurses and would talk long hours into the night, our families got to know each other and when we were both out of hospital, visited each others homes.

I became more quiet and reserved as I grew up, not Fay even though she had lost her sight, she went rock/mountain climbing, she was the adventurous one not I.

Fay married a policeman and I know she had at least one child, her Mum told us that it was amazing watching her feed the baby as the baby would guide Fay’s hand to its mouth. When she became a toddler, gates were installed around the house to help Fay know axactly where her child was as all times.

At one stage Fay made front page news (I think I still have a copy of the paper) when she received a seeing eye dog. In Australia we use Labrador Retrievers as seeing eye dogs, but Fay was given a German Shepherd to show her the way. (I think her dog was rejected by the Police Dog School as being too soft for the job, so she became part of Fays family.

I presume she would now be a Grandmother like me and still have that wonderful adventurous spirit, which I, sadly, have still not been able to find.