hello welcome to easy english so today i'm on brighton beach and i want to find out how the people of brighton met their best friend let's go how did you meet your best friend um we bought a house off him i turned up in raf larbrook which is a rf camp in germany the fellow i was replacing was in the same room as my now best mate uh moving about 20 minutes they'd uh they stripped me naked and tried to shave me nuts so that's how that's how we met and that was it that was
it been friends ever since that was in about 1980 about 1984 i suppose i got there i see was it was it english or german yeah yeah no he's english we were both aria firefighters at the time so uh yeah and we've remained uh well him there's another two fellows i was in germany with um the four of us remain sort of friends ever since really so yeah um my best friend her name's benita she lives in scotland um we met a long time ago in malaysia where we were both born and she is the
sister of my first boyfriend ex-boyfriend [Laughter] how did you meet your best friend i met my best friends at school when i was seven in junior school um yeah and auntie claudia and auntie ellen and they're now my children's godparents um well one of them's mine one of them's your girl parent yep and um we've been friends forever we don't live anywhere near each other anymore so one lives in oxford and one lives in london i met my best friend vicky when i was eight years old in junior school and we have remained friends ever
since we went to senior school together and then i got married and had children and she didn't she remained single and but we've always met up once a week and now i am 66 years old and we are still best mates and we see each other every week no really it's fantastic wow we've lots of support through thick and thin ups and downs of life and uh we're always there for each other how did you meet your best friend i met my best friend at primary school i was about six years of age we went
through school together we went to junior school then as we got older we went our own paths our own separate ways but we kept in touch i moved down to live in this area in rottingdean and my friend went to live in harrogate in yorkshire but we still kept in touch we had plans to uh meet up regular ongoing holidays after our retirement and he died of cancer about six years ago now so all them plans went out the window but we still keep in touch with his wife to see how she is and we
just go along from there so it was a great shame that he died when he did but he was a very young man when he died yeah but uh i'm afraid that he's live and can you tell me what his name was eric eric how did you meet your best friend well my best friend um i wouldn't say i've got just one best friend but um currently i've got two very good friends who i've known since i was about 14 which is getting on near 60 years i met them both at school i met one
we went to the same school using he's in a class below me he was my brother's best friend and the other chaplain met him on a bus um on the wage school so yeah and they've remained good friends for yeah for the last nearly 60 years tell me about um how you met your best friend um i met um my best friend do i give names yeah i met my best friend sandy when she moved into my area and we've now been friends for 42 years uh she's a man an amazing person very likable very
easy to get on with do you want to ask me some questions about her yeah go on then so um when you said she moved to your area how that how did you actually meet though um walking the children walking our babies okay yeah she hasn't been a lifelong best friend but from the age of mid-20s my my mid-20s she has been this video is sponsored by italki the site that allows you to find online language teachers for one-on-one tutoring as a new user you'll get ten dollars in italki credits after your first lesson if
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to italki with this link go.italki.com forward slash easy english to start your first lesson and get ten dollars in lesson credits what was it about them that like did it just click or is there certain characteristics yeah i i think it just clicked and similar attitudes to a lot of things or similar likes and interests and so what is it about dave that like other than the the nut shaving that like sort of uh made you just have this close connection i don't know really it's uh well we had things in common we were doing
the same uh we're in the same line of work i suppose we're both in the forces which is sort of a bit of a family in its own right i suppose uh yeah he was just a bit of a drunkard and so was i at 17 18 sir she's fun she's fun um and she's quite insightful say she's really really stubborn that's not really fun she became my best friend but that's definitely a very strong trait of us and um yeah we sort of share some interests you know music and and you know love of
dancing and socializing things like that and stopping to sort of get you out of sticky situations her stubbornness no actually drives me mad absolutely [Laughter] what are her character traits why is she such a good friend um she is fun um we like the best things together or you know walking and partying occasionally when we're allowed not now but um and we go out exploring i think that's been the best thing and since lockdown you know we go out together um into the countryside we both appreciate the peace and um the forest bathing i suppose
you can call it we love the woods uh and we share just things that you know we both enjoy eating drinking and we've got lots of memories from the past you know so we talk about our memories it's so important to have a good friend but to have one of that long standing is i think quite unique hmm yeah yeah i don't know many people that have friends since that age from eight should you say yes wow yeah we both have the same sort of personality yeah and we just sort of like you can when
you're at junior school you have your little friends yeah and you have your mates and there's some who you call friends but you don't really play with them or go near them but they're still friends but we were really really close yeah like every day at you know playtime yeah where's eric oh or he was saying where's malcolm you know and then we just sort of grew up that way and our parents and eric's parents mixed and got together and we just formed like a group well we are all musicians so we are in the
same band together um so i play the drums and guys are singer and clive's a harmonica player nowadays yes and we still we kept that band going wow um and that's been a major part of keeping us in touch with each other and having a lot of fun as well oh wow what's your band's name it's called the splinters she compliments me definitely okay definitely she brings the best out in me whereas you know you meet people and you think oh they're lovely but then you just can't connect well we connected straight away but she's
the not the superior one of the group but she does yes she compliments me and how often do you speak uh depending sometimes once every other day and sometimes once a month you know it just depends on what's happening and where we are and how how often do you speak now uh well he's in manchester so uh we try and meet up once a year uh we normally speak i don't know maybe three or four times a year i suppose not not not that often i suppose but but when you do it's like yeah we
sort of pick up from where we left off really and uh yeah it's like we sort of haven't been apart for that long if you see what i mean because we just all carry on where we were so yeah and now you said she lives in scotland right she lives in scotland do you live on the coast i live in london actually okay yeah so then that's quite a distance so how do you maintain this friendship well luckily the zoom there's face time especially during a pandemic and uh yeah we chat a lot and text
a lot things like that and i'm planning to see her soon actually you know since we're coming out of this pandemic you going up or she's coming down i um wouldn't mind going up just for a change of scenery yeah and i'm here and you stay in touch yes yeah we stay in touch um we're seeing each other this weekend oh really not you and um we stay in touch on the by texting uh and zoom and um uh sending emails and messages play dates and play dates dates and how frequently do you speak to
each other um probably every week not as much as we used to before we all had children good memories great memories some some really good times i'll i'll just tell you one story okay yeah and we've been out one night uh and he lived his parents house backed onto the rochdale canal so we've been out for a night and we had a few a drink and we're going home there and he says i know a shortcut to my parents house right rochdale canal i know part of the canal where it's shallow so i said good
because i don't want to walk all the way around so we had a few a drink we just you know plopped ourselves into the rochdale canal i thought it would be uncle deep and it was up to here so we're so we got to wade through the rochdale canal i said eric what happened he said ah it was further up i remember now it was further up and we were absolutely i went to hearing water i remember i i mean we're just wading through and at the time you know it was funny but in the
morning it was even more funny you know when we you know recollected it and we thought of what we'd done it was absolutely superb yeah thanks for watching this week's episode let me know in the comments below how you make your best friend and we'll see you next week bye so we complement each other i suppose we don't drink like we used to so it's nice to go out and not get absolutely hammered and just have a normal conversation now supposed now we're a lot older no it's five minutes are you are you not my
best friend i don't think he will be for very long