It's interesting that the last time I met my old friends was way back in 1990. Thirty five years ago. Stuff happens and you drift apart not really meaning to but emails and addresses get changed and that's how it happens.
It wasn't a coincidence that we reconnected at all really. I thought it was but realised that I'd seen my friends face and something must have started my mind churning and the memories of his wife, another old friend of mine where playing with me and then I realised that it was him just without his beard. He's changed a fair bit (haven't we all) but his wife, hardly at all.
We exchanged messages and caught up with 35 years news in two exchanges. We both have sojourned through our work and our adventures, have children, have grandchildren etc. All are retired and that's about that really. There's nothing here to go forward. The great times we all had were back in the 1970s and early 1980s. We have lived different lives since then. We went to visit when we had our eldest and showed her off on our way on holiday and that was that.
You drift away, quite rapidly I think, we used to exchange cards and the like and then nothing. He and I shared our 21st birthday party and we all used to play badminton every Sunday, go to concerts together (a memorable one being Rod Stewart initially cancelled through a snow white out and rescheduled for New Year's Eve). The car broke down at New Cross late on New Year's Eve. We got the train home and went back the next day to fix a leaking hose and limp the car back. We were able to fix our own cars back then.
Oh well, we all move in different spheres and different directions and I'm not sure what I'd expect really. It's nostalgic of course to look back at all the fun and mischief we got up to, sharing the house, brewing our own beer, the fat cat falling down behind the TV (bloody thing deserved it), parties - turning the clock to the wall above the fireplace if you had "company" and we often did.
But that was then and this is now. Did I think we might meet up and pick up where we left off? Probably not, it's been too long and what's the point. I suppose if we met up it would only be interesting for me not for anyone else and my children and theirs were far too young to remember anyway. I think it's best left like that too.
There's a certain longing for the "old days" we were at peak of our youth and young adulthood, strong, fit, slim, good looking, beautiful even. The lady he married does hold special memories for me though, she really was nice to me in an arm around your shoulder sort of way. She is one of the very special people you come across in life who was fun to be with, never toyed with my shy quiet ways and treated me like a brother I suppose. A beauty in mind and body, and she still looks just as I remember her all those years back. I was, of course, too shy to ever ask her out and to coin a phrase used today I'd have been punching way above my weight if I had.
I am pleased she is happy and they are still together and their family are all well and enjoying life. Good on them.
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