My next home will have dark green shutters

Shutters that lie against sun bleached terracotta painted walls. It'll sit amongst other apricot and pistachio green buildings, a stones throw from a small harbour and a smattering of cafes.

Photo by Federico Tasin on Unsplash

“One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!”
E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

Granted, it might be a bit of a challenge finding such a place in west Yorkshire but a girl can dream, can’t she? You see, this is what happens when you go away for a few days. Your head fills with all manner of notions.

Our home in Yorkshire was built in the early 1990s on the side of a hill which means it’s 31 steps from the pavement to the front door and another twelve to the kitchen. We’re guaranteed an almost exclusively green leafy outlook - front and back - all year round. The bricks and window frames might be shades of Farrow and Ball drab brown and Tack Room Door but the foliage is the entire green section of any paint chart.

It’s a long way in every sense from the two person wide maze of alleyways in the Italian towns I found myself in this weekend with two friends, Wendy and Juliet. In so many ways I’m wildly unsuited to mediterranean living what with my fair Celtic skin, dislike of the heat unless I can waft around in linen and sit by the water - sea or pool - and do bugger all. Yet plonk me in an Italian or Spanish town or city and I feel at home.

Camogli, Nervi and Genoa last weekend

We spent our days meandering through alleyways and along the passeggiata, eating gelato and fritto misto (not at the same time), stopping for macchiatos and glasses of white wine brought with armfuls of antipasti including the tastiest focaccia ever to pass my lips. All while rummaging through my memory to try and locate some of the Italian I learned in the lower sixth back in 1988 before I swapped Italian for Spanish.

You can fit a lot into four days, especially when you’re on a 6.40am flight from Manchester airport. I knew I was still in the thick of September’s hangover of goodbyes and long drives to universities, post-summer holiday returns to school and while a 2.30am alarm call, 3.15am pick up time and 6.40am flight from Manchester doesn’t sound ideal, it worked.

And so, a year or so in the organising, I found myself on the Ligurian coast in a small coastal town outside Genoa hitting pause on autumn and making time for more layered, nuanced conversations that we normally have over a hastily snatched mid-morning mid-to-do list coffee back in Ilkley.

I think I forgot how ‘to friend’

I’ve been friends with Wendy for 24 years, Juliet I met when we moved to Ilkley in 2017, although it turns out that our paths came close to crossing back in the 1980s. She was at the same university at the same time as my sister albeit studying different subjects and I almost went to the same sixth form as her before deciding to stick with the school I was already in. Her youngest and my eldest are firm friends and inter railing buddies, my middle son covets their pizza oven and listens to her husband play at open mic sessions at the pub. We also worked together for a while too.

Wendy and her husband are the only people in Ilkley who knew me and my family before we moved here. She’s known my children from birth, knew my parents and was an enthusiastic dancer at our wedding. Her husband was my brother’s best man way back when, and he and my brother were responsible for introducing me to my husband.

When we landed in Ilkley seven years ago, Wendy invited me to her book club and pilates class and opened the door to her friends (including Juliet), crucially giving me the space to create my own friendships with them.

When we get together we talk and listen. We exchange stories about our families, friends and children (we have seven between us aged between 15 - 24). Films - The Outrun - massive thumbs up from me and Wendy while Juliet adds it to her ‘must watch’ list. Slow Horses, again a massive thumbs up from me and Wendy but Juliet, not so much. Books - two of us nearing the end of our year-long War & Peace slow read with

Simon Haisell

while Wendy’s in the ‘no thanks’ camp whilst telling us about the joys of reading on her kindle and the sample pages.

We return to conversations as the days unfold, peeling away a layer at a time while sharing happy experiences like the waiter suddenly plonking down a bottle of limoncello at the end of Saturday’s long lunch with three shot glasses and a smile.

A weekend away with friends is like the ultimate show not tell, we see each other up close and personal dropping clues as to what makes us tick without realising it.

Friendships - it takes time, energy and curiosity

I guess I grew up watching mum prioritise her friendships, making it look easy as she did so. The reality is that she made time to write cards and letters to her friends, embracing email in later years, because her friends were important to her. One of my unanswered questions about the weeks and months leading up to her death was the way she distanced herself from her wide circle of friends. In good health she was quick to pick up the phone and had an enduring curiosity about people, especially the people she loved and brought into her ever-expanding circle of trust, but at the end of her life she retreated.

She was a good teacher but somewhere along the line I forgot how to ‘friend’. I lost my way. Relocating, illness - both the ME that left me isolated at home in bed, and then the cancer a few years later - on top of grief that sent me mad, put a strain on all my friendships as in I wasn’t who I wanted to be, didn’t know how to be.

Friends stuck by me, this isn’t an ‘I was abandoned in my hour of need’ more a recognition that it’s been tough at times knowing where I fit in and it’s been tough being my friend. Add in the rupturing of a significant, close friendship in the months before we left Bath in the summer of 2014 for Bournemouth and you’ve got quite a messy picture.

“You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you.
You have to go to them sometimes.”
A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Friendships - it’s not always plain sailing

For a while I lost my way, uncertain how to keep ‘old’ friendships alive whilst making space for new ones against a backdrop of tortuous house moves, new schools for the children (twice), grief and ill health all of which left me feeling adrift to put it mildly.

My eldest son was walking near his home in Newcastle the other evening when he realised someone was calling his name. He couldn’t place the other young man until he realised it was someone he used to play mini rugby with a decade earlier back in Bath. My son’s hair - all ginger curls -makes him pretty distinctive and what with easy access to photos via social media his old friend recognised him. They had a chat, both went on their way and Charlie said to me the next morning, ‘It’s lovely to think you’re in the memories of people who are in your memories.’

It can be hard in this limbo world when you move. No longer part of your old world and acutely aware that you're not yet part of this new world, left scanning the playground, the streets and touchline at the rugby club on a Sunday morning alongside other freezing parents, wondering whether there might be a space for you to squeeze into.

A fixed smile adorns your face, trying to give off the best version of yourself which can be a tough ask when life feels anything but normal.

I still remember the trepidation I felt sitting on my bed in Ilkley typing the ‘I have cancer’ message I sent to half a dozen friends, anticipating the same reaction as my then 15 year old son’s, ‘FFS, you’re kidding me.’ 

I was almost being relieved that I was the other end of the country so I could hit send and disappear, knowing I wouldn’t run into any of them at school pick up time or outside our local row of shops in Oldfield Park. Distance meaning they didn’t have to physically carry me through this, on top of all the other years catching me through chronic fatigue, redundancy, relocation and grief. I didn’t want to be the one being supported - again. I didn’t want to be the problem friend.

Creating space for new connections

Instead a new group of women in Ilkley generously threw themselves into that role even though they’d only known me a few months, led and organised in no small part by Wendy. Food started arriving on our doorstep along with offers of chats and coffees and lifts to and from hospital. Offers that were honoured time and time again. I salute them for taking me under their wing, they barely knew me and yet opened up space for me in their lives.

I remember bumping into Juliet at Ilkley Tarn just after being diagnosed, ‘You won’t need to ask for help, it’ll just be there for you,’ was what she said, more or less, and she was right. People are kind.

It was a timely reminder that friendships were there whether I could see them or not, and kudos to those long-term friends of mine who, from a distance, gently kept in touch throughout this period.

I’d landed in Ilkley somewhat naively hoping this move would signal (another) fresh start for our family but in reality I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. I’d started making new friends in Bournemouth but still felt a strong pull back to Bath and we were only by the beach for three years. It wasn’t quite enough time amongst the grief to really lay down roots, as kind as people were. I wasn’t in a fit state of mind to make friends.

And then came Ilkley, a town and community vibe I instinctively warmed to but add cancer on top of all of the above, and well, it was the final straw.

Friendships knitting me into the landscape

If I think about home and belonging, I think of bricks and mortar, and I think of the moorland landscape but it’s the friendships that knit me into this place, the friendships further afield that make me feel safe and secure. It’s just taken time for me to regain some of the friendship confidence I’ve lost over the years.

As often happens, when I write I start to see things differently. The fact that I’m here writing about a four-day trip to Italy with two friends who’ve known me for 24 and seven years respectively is a pretty fabulous. That I returned to a message from a friend asking how my trip to Genoa was, and that this morning I had a coffee with another friend who finished cancer treatment a couple of weeks ago is further evidence of the friendships that now weave in and out of this Ilkley life of mine.

The trouble is, all these big life events lead to a lot of introspection, you turn inwards, the weight of the grief and loss enormous and overwhelming, leaving little if any space for much else or bluntly, anyone else.

I remember my grief counsellor explaining how in time, it’s not that grief lessens or shrinks, it’s just that life expands around it, which this short video explains brilliantly. I think this is what’s been happening over the past couple of years.

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I’ve known for years that friendship (I include family in this - the army of cousins, aunts and uncles I’m fortunate to have alongside me) is something I want to write about. I want to explore it in the context of belonging, of feeling safe and secure, and I love that it’s a joyful weekend away in Italy with friends that’s opened the door to this conversation.

Maybe I also feel confident enough to have this conversation now that I’m in a healthier, happier place. What’s that Glennon Doyle quote? ‘Make sure you're sharing from your scars, not your open wounds’, words I’ve been on nodding terms with for a few years now but have only begun to understand more recently.

Those who were around at the time will know how much the friendship breakdown in 2014 knocked me - it was an open wound for far too long.

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There’s so much more to peel away here so if anyone has any books, podcasts or articles on friendship or even stories they feel comfortable sharing, please pop into the comments or hit reply, I’d love to hear from you.

I also want to give a big shout out to my writing friends. Friendships developed through a mutual love of writing in communities like

London Writers' Salon

and here on

Substack Writers

where I’ve been able to practice being a friend again, connecting with people, sharing vulnerabilities and quietly building my confidence from behind the screen that’s hopefully translating into the outside world now.

And in the meantime, I highly recommend Genoa and the Ligurian coast, four fabulous days even with mixed weather. I’d go back like a shot - with friends - for the focaccia alone!

Thanks as ever for reading,
Harriet