Ten years ago, before I changed departments to become a Greeter I was working in the supermarket bakery.
We were a jolly little bunch, a group of women all with a different story to tell.
There was  Janette , a pleasant ordinary looking women from a small mill town who shocked us all by running the London marathon in her late fifties... nowadays we are still theatre buddies and although she retired from work two years ago she is still running half marathons aged 63
Susan was a 30 year old unmarried mother who at age 16 when she started working as a stable hand got pregnant by an up and coming jockey who promptly dropped her when  he discovered she was with child...there is something a little sad about Susan, she has created a false Walter Mitty world for herself and we were never quite sure if what she was telling us was real or not.  She's still working in the bakery now and hasn't changed much.
Ricky, the token supermarket gay who loved to camp it up and do 'theatre' with a bunch of middle-aged women, he's now working as a trolley dolly on the railway.
There's Lynn and Jennifer, two forty something year old women who were in relationships with children, they both vowed they would never marry their partners although they did cohabit.  Well, one has since wed (in order to have the same name as her children) or so she says and the other one is considering marriage seriously now in order to reap any pension benefits it may bring.
I musn't forget to mention my pal Mary, she is the same age as me and was married to a man who, like 't'old man' wasn't interested in travelling to some of the places we would talk about while we were packing and labelling the bread week in, week out.
That was when we decided that we would live life on our terms if the men weren't interested, so me and Mary swanned off to New York  and then to Prague without them and had the time of our lives.
Later I would go to Goa with mary and 27 of her relatives to see her daughter go through a marriage ceremony in a temple over there.
The last time I went away with Mary was under sad circumstances as her husband died of a sudden heart attack whilst playing his trumpet marching through the street with his brass band.  We went to Thassos, a wonderfully quiet greek island so that she could try to come to terms with what had happened.
The last person I want to mention is Joyce.
She was well past retirement age even then but she liked to come to the bakery to work just to see her friends and to keep active.  She was a well spoken, quite refined lady and I often wondered why she would want to keep working at a supermarket in her mid sixties.  I called her 'Lady Mayoress'  as once upon a time many moons ago her husband was once Mayor of a small mining town.
Her hobby was painting, she was a member of a local art group and preferred to  work with water colours and occasionally someone would commision her to paint their dog or child.  I always meant to buy one of her works but never did, the opportunity simply passed.
We would occasionally go to the theatre together as a group or sometimes go out for a nice meal in a restaurant together but when I  left the bakery five years ago the group outings diminished.

Time has moved on and I hadn't seen 'Lady Mayoress' for a couple of years, until this week that is.
I was in town shopping, t'old man had ventured in with me but made his excuses and popped into a local hostelry for refreshment. 
I passed a building where outside there was a sign that said "Local Art Club exhibition"
I stopped and thought "i'm sure that is the art club that my old friend was a member of.
I decided to go in and look around and sure enough there was one of her paintings exhibited there in front of me, I recognised it was hers straight away for although she is only an amateur painter she had a certain style.
"Perfect"  I thought  " that's what t'old man can buy me for my birthday, a bargain at only £50"
I left the building, went into the pub and brought t'old man back to look at it and just as I had persuaded him to put his hand into his pocket  who should she walk in  but Lady Mayoress herself
The deal was struck, t'old man went back to the pub and my old friend and I had a chat and a cup of tea like it was only yesterday we last met.
Strangely enough that evening (last Monday) I had a meal at a restaurant owned by the couple who I witnessed marrying in Goa, my co-diners were four of the aforementioned ladies who I haven't socialised with for quite a few years...strange eh?

The painting is now duly hung in the second bedroom and I like it a lot

You can get an idea from this photo what the subject matter is but the colour and quality is not entirely true 'cos of the light and cheap camera.