Friends, Roots, and Open Doors

I had coffee with a friend on Walcot Street this morning. That sentence might sound ordinary enough, but it didn’t feel ordinary at all.

We became friends a few years ago now — one of the few new friendships I’d made in quite some time — and it made me realise how long it had been since I’d properly opened up to anyone. Last year was a quieter one for me in many ways. Without the constant whirl of the pub while I came to terms with my dad’s passing, and with life asking a lot of emotional attention elsewhere, I found myself spending more time alone than I was used to. Not unhappily, exactly — just quietly. There’s a difference. But somewhere along the way I noticed I’d become rather good at not opening new doors.

So over the past few months I’ve made a small resolution: to be open again. Open to people. To invitations. To possibilities. In my old life as a consultant I’d say yes to the most random meetings and something interesting always happened — a connection, an idea, a story. Somewhere along the line I stopped doing that. I’m still not entirely sure when or why.

These days we spend time in a small, peaceful place outside the city where life moves more slowly, and the little community there has begun to feel like something gently unfolding — something we might truly be part of. We’re off for drinks with some of them on Friday at the local pub (I realise the irony), and on Saturday another couple I met earlier this year have invited us over for dinner. None of this sounds dramatic written down, but it feels quietly significant. Life, it seems, is stretching its limbs again.

Spring has something to do with that, I suspect. This week I’ll be back at the allotment planting seeds in the greenhouse and experimenting with new methods with Pete, who gardens there with me. We’re trying a technique that encourages deeper roots — improvised planting spirals made from reused materials, otherwise known as planting snails — and I can’t help thinking there’s a metaphor in that somewhere. Strong roots don’t form in a rush. They form because something has decided it’s safe to stay.

Back at the pub, we’re preparing for the seasonal shift too. Our pop-up beer garden will be returning soon — that familiar transformation when a tucked-away space wakes up and remembers what it’s for. There’s new kit to sort, umbrellas to coax back into service, and that particular kind of hopeful energy that always arrives just before the clocks change. We did have a plan to mark its return with Scrumpy-and-Bangers Weekender in mid-March, timed to coincide with the Bath Half but we're having to postpone that now until later in the year.

It’s funny how renewal rarely arrives with fanfare. More often it turns up quietly: a coffee with a friend, a handful of seeds, a message saying “fancy a drink Friday?”, a space being swept ready for people again.

I think I’m learning that opening your life back up doesn’t usually happen all at once. It happens the way spring does — gradually, almost shyly at first — until one day you realise the light has changed and everything is growing again.

And you are too.