A disaster

almost occurred last night. Our friends Betty and Keith called in late afternoon and stayed on for the evening meal. Fortunately there was still some soup - our own home grown giant size pumpkin went into this. I then resorted to eggs and made a fritatta. Normally I would do this in the small Creuset pan. That makes one just big enough for two. With four I resorted to a larger pan - and discovered it was not heavy enough. I managed to burn the bottom. Thankfully Betty and Keith are, to all intents and purposes, family!
They stayed late, as always. Now that Dad no longer has the car we do not see them as often because they live in the hills behind us. However there is telephone contact, more frequent and certainly more pleasant than contact with Dad's brother.
Good, close friendships are not common. Most of us have friends but that depth of friendship is rare.
Is international friendship between nations ever like that? Some would say that the relationship between Australia and the US, the UK, NZ and Canada is. I doubt the Australia-US relationship is. That is based on commercial and security interests. Our Commonwealth ties are closer despite efforts of some Prime Ministers and Republicans to cut off ties they see as 'apron strings'. Australia still needs the UK. It needs NZ and Canada too. Asian ties may (or may not) be in our commercial interest and good relations with Asia may be in our regional security interests but Asia is not our spiritual home. We are still essentially European in nature even with Asian migration having increased.
This morning I am ready to curse the migration of our next door neighbour - a perfectly pleasant person. Her young son (3) is going through a period of screaming his head off at any hour - this morning it was just after 4 a.m. Having been late to bed I had hoped to sleep through until at least 6 a.m. Being woken by young Mr Screaming-I-Don't-Want-To made me long, yet again, to give him one walloping whack. I know, I know - that is against all current child rearing theories and the law but how do you reason with a screaming and unreasonable three year old?