Sarah Potter Writes

Last Monday, I met up with the wonderful Sherri Matthews who blogs at A View From My Summerhouse.

Sherri and I have become firm emailing friends (the modern equivalent of pen friends) since she appeared as guest storyteller on my blog back in December. I’ve lost count of how many emails we’ve exchanged since then, but they’re probably exceeded the one hundred mark.

Although we live about 150 miles apart — Sussex and Somerset — we’ve discovered that in the past we shared many of the same stamping grounds, which makes it amazing we never crossed paths earlier in our lives; then again, maybe we did walk down the same street, never knowing we would become friends later.

In fact, it’s uncanny how many life coincidences and things we have in common. For example, one of Sherri’s grown up sons lives in the seaside town (these days a city) where I was born and went to school, while her other son lives in the county town where I attended Technical College and, later, where my husband had an antique shop.

Last weekend, Sherri was on one of her regular visits to this county town, which is only 17 miles from my home, and, to my great excitement, stayed on an extra day so we could finally meet.

Much as I suspected, we got along famously and never stopped talking. If anyone were to calculate the number of words shared between us in a few hours, these words would most likely equal the length of a novella! Needless to say, the time flew by far too fast.

Before I sign off, I just want to mention that Sherri hasn’t been able to blog for the past fortnight due to her new laptop breaking down and the retailers taking an age fixing it for her. This has meant she has had to use her old laptop, on which the internet moves slower than a snail. But at least the machine is useable for word-processing, so she can continue working on her memoir. Meanwhile, do check out Sherri’s blog and have a read of her old posts and say “hi”, so she has some lovely comments awaiting her when she returns to blogging in the near future.

Meanwhile, I say three cheers to WordPress for its grand blogging community, where friendships such as mine and Sherri’s are forged 🙂