The Sweat in my Tshirt

I didn’t know I was such a ranting person. I’m really quite happy with my lot in life and I hope I am a moderately well educated, level headed individual who is able to appreciate that. I think I have a lot of love to give out to the people around me and I hope I genuinely care for my peers. I will genuinely go out of my way to show nice gestures and forethought for most people’s feelings. I’d even say I’m quite humble of my opinion and to my detriment I will naturally defer to most people about me.

It leaves me curious as to why I type faster, more freely and feel like I have more to say when I go on a bit of a rant. I think that when I document my most verbose and whiny moments I also keep them under control and in acknowledging them I put them to the side. In this I can take ownership and not feel a need to spit out vitriol when I’m out in the real world. But to redress this imbalance and put out the some ying with the yang I thought I would tell you about something that genuinely makes me happy in this world. My work colleagues and even my work.

It will never be a blissful love in hippy commune where we have nothing but glowing trite compliments to pass out to each other to a point where they seem unbelievable, but as far as work places go I think it is one of the most ‘teamy’ I’ve worked in. Maybe because I came from a myriad of jobs as an agency worker where I was employed to make up numbers and provide usually substandard care to people who deserved more respect. I worked alongside potentially brilliant workers who were shown discourtesy and disrespect by their employers by being paid piss poor wages and treated with unprofessional disdain.

In coming to work in this team and even this area of work (as the previous team in the same industry was fantastic too) I am bowled over by the strong bond and ties that exist. I’d always wondered how people could work in this line of work and stay for so long. In my assuming my mind all workers would be on a path to naturally burn out and would eventually end up being disillusioned by the system. This is not the case at all. I have now realised by the way we communicate and support each other wholly is one of the ways we can be a job. Our line of work is sometimes amazingly stressful and full of decisions I ask myself on a daily basis if I am qualified to make, but the team I am with is nurturing, embracing, and give me a sense of purpose other than to earn a wage.

To be clear, when I say job, I really do mean the team and the people I work with. I don’t mean the system we work in, the bigger cogs or the people who manoeuvre them. That is still very much like an episode of the Goonies; full of twist and turns, henchmen, goons and booby traps that sometimes we don’t see coming and sometimes are bleeding obvious. Sometimes even it ends up with a shock that all the viewers and I never see coming and takes out one of the main characters.

But like the Goonies, there is an ‘us’. An ineffable synergy of support and thoughtfulness that helps us take on these daily, weekly adventures and helps us get to the end of each day with only a few scratches and an anecdote or two that only our fellow Goonies would get. I’m not the main character in my group, but then again as some crass upper management person said thinking it’d be noted down as an aphorism worthy of Jungian philosophy or confucisous rather than on the back of a business card that will be dropped as fast a bad curry from the night before “there is no I in team”

I think in my team I’ll always be Richard “Data”, the geek of the group. He wants to be as cool as James Bond but usually ends up being as clumsy but loveable as Inspector Gadget. And that’s fine by me.

It’s not that I’m against social drinking or enjoying a beer outside when the weathers hot and life seems great. Although maybe it’s a false euphoria where the UV rays that aren’t silently giving you melanoma’s, are stimulating your skin to give you the serotonin rush that makes you happy. I too enjoy sitting around a table with friends old and new chatting about nothing in particular and cathartically releasing the pressures of the day over a few drinks.

I’m more against the need by some, and living in Chavsfield I’m inclined to think most people, to slip into the stereotype “I’m drinking” behaviours. Patterns that whilst under the influence of alcohol are more herd like than a cattle farm and easier to identify than looking for a Goth on Goth night in a Goth club.

The volume noise goes up as the social grace goes down proportionally to the beer consumed. And when I say social graces I don’t have in my mind a scene out of Wuthering heights where Mr Darcy shows the denouement of manners by doffing his cap, opening a door for the ladies and talking of England with clear pronunciation of vowels and consonants, I’m not that deluded. When I say social grace I mean not being a twat and behaving like they wouldn’t in the real world.

Rather than following the natural patterns of waiting for a suitable gap in conversation to steer a topic it seems the correct choice for the simple folk to talk louder and over anyone else. Whilst laughing is traded in for a cacophony of braying, bragging, bullshitting and undermining the people they’re with to a point where it spills into violence. Disagreements aren’t settled with an agreement to disagree or a respect for the other person’s opinion, it’s resolved with indignation and thuggery.

I can’t remember the last time at work I’ve spilled out onto the street to physically assault a colleague for looking at my monitor or spilling my third coffee of the day or for even correcting me for a piece of work I may have got something wrong with. It seems the special drinkers of this world want to gravitate to the middle of a road to repeatedly hit someone whilst the people they are with follow them out to initially try to placate the situation but ultimately, and I’m sure if you ask them they wouldn’t be able to tell you where it changes, end up attacking another person in the group they suddenly see as opposing until the whole group of people are screaming punching and displaying the most Neanderthal like of behaviours in public.

The twist to the story though, is the worst offenders are the people who try put out the image of being well off or more socially advanced. It’s the people who pull up in their expensive over polished cars with the paper thin shirts where the label needs to be sown to the outside as symbol for the tosser clan they belong to. And if the reflection of all the ludicrously overpriced watches and trinkets don’t hinder your vision then the almost tangible miasma of synthetic scents will sting your eyes before you even get to the fog of expensive cigarette smoke.

It is these people who don’t seem to know how to do drunk, or feel they do and try to emulate “the wild and crazy” life of the heavy drinker that they have falsely fixed in their heads. They belive the best times need to have an anecdote attached, to bore the shit out of people with for years to come. Whilst the blur of alcohol consumption erode their senses and they become a caricature of themselves and this idea. Blown out of all proportion they become abhorrent thuggish street performers and voyeurism fodder for the sober people about them.

It’s these tag heur wearing, label flashing, ten bit waanabes that will think it’s funny to have fights with wheelie bins casting rubbish across the street and think the best place to vomit is openly where they just urinated, against a wall or someone else’s parked car. They develop a new found sense of honour and the only defence for them is offence by hitting, and usually kicking as this now de rigeur for the wanna be shirted thug, another man when he’s down. I always thought when the other person was down, like in boxing, it signified the end of a fight and identified a winner. Now when a person hits the ground it’s just the time in a fight where a thug gets to prove how like the Cro-Magnon man they really are as a race and they continue the violence until they’ve harmed, scarred, hospitalised or even killed someone who might have spilt their beer, looked at their wife or made a comment they couldn’t process.

If you want to play competitive drinking, competitive bullshit, and display your chav feathers with the puffed up chest, befuddled ego and your degree in inbredology then don’t please call me (although I suspect your junk food fattened fingers and slack jawed dexterity couldn’t work a phone anyway)

However, if you want to get together, muse on the complexities of life, talk shit about TV shows, reminisce about old times and generally enjoy the moment to breath out and not take things seriously, now that age has afforded us the luxury of learning from hindsight the inconsequentiality of it all really, then you know where I am. I’ll waste an afternoon and maybe stagger a little as I go home.

Life is like a box of chocolates
You only buy them at birthdays, Christmas or when you’ve seriously fucked up and need a tokenistic gesture that this is wholly uncomparative to exactly how much you love someone. You always buy from Thornton’s as it is solely and exclusively now synonymous with real love, whilst that cheap dairy milk love is metaphorically like taking a crap on her side of the bed. Then if you buy a box of Heroes at work you know you are saying “I couldn’t be arsed to buy you anything inventive for this year’s secret Santa”
Of course when they’ve been opened you scan through the information card as if you are discerning and have a clue to what the flavours are except all you know is you don’t like some, only remembering as you bite into them but still finish them off as it’d be wrong not to.
Or if you’ve bought them for your significant other you refuse to have one when they offer as it affords you the conceited luxury of saying “no, I bought them for you” which translates into “Of course I want one but the moment I start dipping in they will be like any other chocolates that I could by all the year round when I feel like eating chocolates with you and therefore would deminishes my cocoa based symbol of love, now eat up you gluttonous pig and remove the temptation form my presence”
Oh wait, that’s not life at all, that’s just a box of chocolates.

I’m not a good looking bloke, that’s a fact.  I have messed up teeth (self inflicted) weird marks around my eyes, a geeky smile, a paunch and no dress sense. I’ve never felt anything beyond awkward in most social situations and feel that conscious of my looks I don’t really concentrate when I look in a mirror (it saves a lot of disappointment). I can’t even say that I was involved a life changing incident that physically scarred me and I originally had a shot to exist in the beautiful world but happenstance and kismet too me along another path. I’m just a little bit homely (a nice euphemism for ugly). This isn’t a navel gazing whinge though, I am currently in a place where that doesn’t bother me now and even were my life circumstances to change I hope my perspective wouldn’t.

So in that respect I was considering what my perspective of beauty is and what people naturally assume it must be because I am male. It isn’t ultimately aesthetic, but looks do come to play a part in the final picture. My first real love I liked only liked as a person until I saw her music collection, the magazines she read (one that went out of print called ‘the comic’) and I heard her rants about the things that pissed her off, of which there were a lot. Getting to know her ‘first impression’ was then combined with all of her idiocies and from this point on I found her incredibly attractive, including her looks. My schema of what physically beautiful women should look like changed dramatically and morphed into a close approximation of this girl. Even now when I see someone who looks like her, dresses similar or has the same body shape and maybe even mannerism, I initially think they are attractive in all ways.

My first impressions are based on a person’s looks, but not because looks are important, but because they are part of the sum total of the person and a primary way of remembering them. When I met my wife who again ticked all the boxes with personality, views, perspective on life and all those other factors my schema took another shift to fit my feelings and now she is what beauty is to me.

I once said to girl with a one track mind after she made a comment on where Nell Mc Andrew promotes Activia Yoghurt, that I didn’t find Nell attractive, anymore either. This got a shirty response along the lines of how facile and typically male I was being by taking it all down to looks.  It’s an assumption in its self to assume I meant the looks.

When I first became aware of Nell McAndrew it was when she was a feisty, outspoken, supporter of charities including Breast Cancer Awareness, Help The Aged and other I can’t recall.  It was the fact I’d seen her on the big breakfast and she was funny and sometimes funnier than her co presenters.  I know she was a model and but even to this day I have not seen any of her glamour photo’s. Whatever she did I would see an attractive person, purely because the persona played out in the press and how she was associated with good causes. Had she come across as facile, vain, aggressive and uninteresting then the exact same shows would have been a little off putting and my interpretation of people I thought looked similar would initially be based on that presumption and guided opinion formed from seeing her.

When I said Nell McAndrew wasn’t attractive anymore, I actually meant that now she was selling probiotic life changing gut yoghurt that probably wouldn’t change your life in the way she was saying I didn’t find her attractive due to the person I thought she had become. Were the same advert shown, without the product in place or promotion played out but with her chatting about how important her family are or recounting some irreverent childhood anecdote then I think I would have still found her attractive.

I agree that to assume looks are a way of determining who a person is, is wrong.  I’m sure I too fall into that trap and believe we all do this in some way by the interaction we may have with similar looking folk. But to assume when a man says a women is attractive he means her looks, her body, and the way she may or may not conform to societies ‘perfect women’ image is also a wrong assumption in its self.

I would hope that people would get to know me, find out that I’m alright and every one in couple of thousand women find me attractive. I’m fully aware it’s not my looks that are going to get that for me.

Two reunions down now (not counting the little evenys that popped up between several smaller groups of friends) and things are going really well. I’d even say friendships are picking up momentum and bonds are becoming stronger. A new circle of friends are forming, a circle that wouldn’t have been possible ten years ago without the internet and our busy busy lives. Yet with no deliberate irony these are the oldest friendships too going through asecond cycle.

This time around the reunion was unique, completely different and slightly more…. (thinking of a polite euphemism for some uncomfortable debauchery that took place) eclectic mix of people turned up this time. I wish I’d been a little more sober and a little less relaxed, I think I would have had more appreciation for the night and probably remembered more of it too.

The last first reunion I turned up to I wasn’t really worried about at all. The way I saw it, it either went well or it didn’t.  If anything it would fall into the annals of time and be nothing more than an anecdote of why you shouldn’t do reunions. So the fact we all got on so well and hopefully (unless I missed something obvious) rekindled old friendships with such ease was a euphoric surprise.

This time then however, I was itching to get at it, I’d been counting down days for the last few months. I couldn’t wait to see some new faces, shoot the breeze and generally be myself all night. I’m happy with the person I am now so have nothing, even if that makes me idiosyncratic and obtuse, to hide. As a consequence of my contentment, I relaxed a little too much, drank enough beer to fuzz the memory, hopefully not enough to be seen as a raging alcoholic, heh. Look, I was still able to handle a camera and produce some shots that I was happy with so I wasn’t too bad.

Question: What was it like the second time around?

Answer: Different

I guess I’d built up ideas in my head, had had contacts and conversations on facebook so had been expecting something else. I don’t think I took into account the new dynamics and other people’s nerves. I know I can be a little off kilter when I feel nervous or on edge, so I should have expected it from others too. There was a little more high jinx and overly eccentric camaraderie that nerves and beer can do for a group than the first time and even though I too was letting the Guinness flow freely it wasn’t my thing.

I’ve over valued the power of facebook and enjoyed the rush of true and still very genuine nostalgia and bonds if reaffirms. As Primo Levi said

“The perception of others is our own precepts projected, and the ones we love are the ones these fit with the least distortion”

I recently got a little too into facebook and now I need to look up from the computer screen for a while and concentrate on the things that mean the most to me. This too includes a lot of the friendships formed on facebook and the people from Brunts, but it should be used as the tool it is there for, for communicating rather than a replacement to anything else.

Introspection aside, it was a great night. A friend from Devon (I think) came up and I’d totally forgot he said he might attend, so not only did I not know he was coming, but when he walked in I didn’t recognise him for a long time. I’m still looking back at the photos and am only just recognising him. At least now when I’m ignorant to people in the streets I know it’s truly because of my senility and poor recall than any innate ignorance.

Everyone got on better than we ever did at school and time has only cemented the common thread that was The Brunts.

It’s next year I’m looking forward to as there are lots of little events in the pipeline that involve taking that next steps and reforming old friendships such as introducing people to the rest of our lives. We have on the cards Days out with the children, cinema, maybe concerts, curries houses (Mr M) and even some stuff for charity. It’s next year when we will affirm that sincerity of our tentative meetings and our reaching out.

Well there we were again, it seems another get together was imminenet and we all answered the call.
Well all but 1, but that’s fully understandable, our friend is not in a happy place at the moment so did a rain check and we’ll have to bend his arm for the next.  The rest of the old crew turned up to Notts for what was going to be a pub crawl.

It turned out in the end though we were very happy where we were, we’d secured a very nice table to stand around away from the thorough fair of punters and decided to stay put all the evening.  It was also sensible by the fact we now have a combined age of 144, frankly the rain would have caused our ailments to flare up and if one of us had slipped who knows what damage we might have done to a hip.

Being in the pub also numbed our preception of the effect of the beer.  We totted up that we had a total of 10 pints each, which really for me is a bloody lot of beer.  It didn’t help that it was the sort of pub that has a beer dampening field around it so when you’re in the confines of the four walls you don’t feel too bad, but as soon as you step out the door and the fresh air hit BOOM, yer drunk.

I must admit, I was over prepared for this gig and bought a substantial amount of money (this is all about perspective and substantial to me might be lunch money to Jay) for the pub crawl.  I’m still not used to people doing rounds and sometimes need a kick up the butt to get mine in, though I did actively offer to get rounds, snacks and such like, so Iin some ways  am getting used to it.  By the fact we stayed in one place and shared the buying of drinks I didn’t spend half as much as I thought I would and could have easily afforded the curry.  If I’m honest  though I’m glad we didn’t get one.  I’m sure I wouldn’t have remembered it well or appreciated it that much either and if I’m going to pay for food I want to remember it.  Beer food should be stodgey, gap filling, potentially below average, of questionable sources and you should be able to eat it your hands and no form or dignity.  I think there’s almost a statute requirement for you get some of it down your top, it’s called kebab tagging, so you can know where you’ve visited the night before.

We covered all topics and all people from who might make it to the next reunion, who won’t and who really didn’t have an interest in turning up at all and were yet to be converted to the cult of facebook.  We talked about the people we remembered but hadn’t seen yet and mused over the “where are they now..”, the “last I heard..”, “she aint interested…” and the “they’ve turned out great..”  I wouldn’t say it was gossping as our mind set was more for filling in the blanks for each other and testing to see if our perceptions of persons A, B, and C were the same as each others.  We even talked about the people we fancied then and the people “were we not happily in relationships and far too grown up to make a fool of ourselves now” we thought life had been very kind to and were very nice indeed.

It was a shame certain people couldn’t have been there that’s you Mr Savage, and it would have been great if others would consider popping along too.  Mr Straw, Mr Wardle, Mr Simeon Brown and of course Mr Crowder (he was off doing something far more important things, family), are always going to be welcome and we’ll keep a chair spare for you to joins us.  I don’t know where people’s lives are at the moment and know that a lot of us seem to be hitting that funk you get at 36 when you question your importance and contribution but i’d be a shame to think that this could cause a mist that someone might regret one day that they didn’t follow up thier friends and remember when times were simple because as it turns out it’s very theraputic .

Like the first time we got together this year and every time after that, there has yet to be an uncomfertable pause or a time where there’s a gap no one knows how to fill. I think that’s why some of us are getting a little evangelical over at facebook.  It’s more than nostalgia, it’s what the youth of today have known for a long time now and us older folks are just realising.  All these sites don’t reduce your social skills, they hone then to a fine points and tie bonds strongly together like a cub scout knot; tautline, square, sheet bend and clove hitch all rolled into one (don’t worry, I googled that)

Already we are gearing up to the 6th of December and a few people are batting ideas about for 2009.  I think next year is the year of new friends, new bonds and plenty of fun times out.

Do you ever feel as if there’s far too much to do each day and even when you complete the next task, like a multi headed hydra from Greek mythology, taking down one will only result in another two stemming from it.  I know for myself writing down everything I need to do is something I really should get around to completing.  I’ve come to accept it’s a facet of adult hood and I know when I catch myself saying “the jobs never end” I can hear my mum and dad saying exactly the same statement over twenty years ago.

There’s this approach called M.I.T.  I know sounds like an acronym for something you might catch were you to spend to many times getting far too intimate with the people of Mansfield who take safe sex as seriously as they do world politics.  Myocordic Infested Testicles, or Matriarchal Inflamed Titties (yeh maybe that’d work in an alternative universe where slang terms for breast make it into English etymology and common medical terms as much as latin)

It’s actually a bit of a zen thing I read on a site called “zen habits” a run of the mill, though very well done and one of my favourites, Lifehackeresque sites.  It’s basically a site that though it tries to tell you how to suck eggs (though as you read it you forget how much you’ve forgot how to suck eggs) and how to do the things you really should be doing were you better at organising your life. If I’m being honest and if you’re honest too, if we could organise our lives that well we’d be in better places and making less resolutions each year about where we can improve ourselves.  Sometimes though when you feel like you want to shake things up or at least endeavour a little to get out of a fucking rut (some of this personal rather than generic quoting) it’s great to place to pop to and get a little guidance.  We all know the path we want to take and every know and then it’s nice to have some help with the rudder to steer us.

M.I.T or Most Important Tasks seems like a sensible way of not getting bogged down with everything you’re failing to do on a daily basis because there’s too much of it to do.  Those hundred and one things also have to be wrapped around my real life and for me that is where the log jam occurs.  The creative flow gets stuck and I end up completing nothing as I really can’t work out where to start and the thought that this is just one of many to-do’s drains my energy.  With a M.I.T list however it’s ok to pick a few each day and work through them rather than completing everything at once.  Even in a 5 day week that could be 15 tasks a week.

I like the idea of sitting down and prioritising the tasks I complete and the three that I’d be happy with if they were the only one’s I did complete.  An approach like that can take the pressure off and even reduced the self berating I do when I don’t feel I’m doing enough with my days.  It can encourage me when I feel particularly up for getting something extra special done and I put on some big tasks to achieve, but by the same token I’d like to think I could put three minimal tasks should I really not feel like doing much in the day.  It’s a bench mark to hit so I know regardless of everything else  I can sleep more sound at night.

Now maybe if I can sift through the multitude of tasks that I know I should be doing, identify just three that I think are important for that day, and then try and schedule them around feeding the children, washing the pots, keeping the house tidy, ironing, going to work, keeping in contact with my friends, writing (I need to do it more) photography and photo shop (so I don’t forget my life when all the aluminum I suck on brings on early on set dementia) maintaining a relationship and sleeping, my life will be pretty much complete and I’ll be able to use the free time for chilling.

For all the horror books and dark movies on the big screen real life will always scare the shit out of me.  Real life is the part of daily living that you have to pinch yourself on a regular basis because of all the evil that exists.  I couldn’t really say whether it is the vile actions of others or our society’s acceptance and apathy towards the stories that scare me the most.  I knew as a child that when something tragic or evil was on the news it was headline news for days, the story resonated out like a ripple and people talked about it for a long time after.  That really isn’t the case now as the despicable actions of others have become common place.

I’m currently reading “The Walking Dead” by Robert Kirmman an ongoing comic book series that I had the misfortune of being introduced to by a friend.  I say misfortune purely because of it is the most addictive, most shocking, most gripping and most beautiful whilst devastating story I’ve read in a long time.  It’s the first comic ever I’ve gone into true fanboy mode over and cried at the end of a story.

It’s a zombie story, where the zombies are secondary players. This series centres around the life of officer Rick Grimes, his 7 year old son Carl their family and the people he meets while trying to survive.  Due to this unknown plague that has turned a majority of the planet into zombies it is a world stripped of distractions. Gone are the shopping malls, benile TV shows, and pointless fluff that infects us on a daily basis.  As a result the darkness and strength in the characters are amplified to reflect the potentially of our humanity.  The potential for heroics, the fear and the darkness of the human soul when our boundaries are removed and routine lives broken down is driven to the extreme.  It explores how we could function as a group and the dynamics that would take whilst the human soul struggles to re evolve.

The end of book 8 (comic #48) ripped my heart out and left me more than a little devastated.  Whilst now, as the story continues, I read through the later issues and I find it difficult and emotionally tense to complete each comic.  I see the struggle and devastation depicted in each frame and it makes the story heavier to digest.  How the little boy Carl is living a completely different life of survival after the a world away from what he knew is compelling.I know this is pure undiluted fantasy (I was going to say undigested but digested food comes out as crap and this isn’t that) but when there are obvious parallels with our society today and I have a son about the same age it isn’t unreasonable to say it effects me more intensely.  I see Carl and the events he has to live through and I think of how I would live day to day if that was my son.  Silly, but it intensifies the impact of the books.

I read this make belief tragedy and palpable horror and it tightens my stomach and leaves me with images to carry day to day (which is the strength of the story telling) Then I look up at the real world to find stories like this

A BOY of three is in the care of social services today after being found alone in a burning house. The toddler was rescued from a first-floor room in a maisonette in Deptford, south-east London, just after 9.30am yesterday.
Two fire engines were sent to the home, where crews found the little boy alone. Reports say he was left in a locked bedroom with a doughnut and a bowl of milk. The boy’s mother, who is in her 40s, has been arrested on suspicion of child neglect.

This is the real horror that gives me sleepless nights and makes my head spin when I think about it.  These 6 o’clock news stories are regular, unsurprising and almost accepted as normal.  These abusive situations are probably occurring daily around the world and you couldn’t script a real life drama with these stories as it would be too outrageous and too depressing.  As much as this is abhorrent to watch or read about, the greatest tragedy will be how we’ve had to become immune to the real horror and had to evolve to deal with it in the context of our family lives.  It doesn’t mean we don’t recognise the atrocities, it means they happen too often for us to maintain the shock and we find it easier to shut out our periphery vision. In doing so we can attempt to continue to fight against it and protect the ones we love.  It’s a shame, but the scripts of comics books are where we escape to now, even when it’s zombie horror, as a break from our world.

You couldn’t have predicted it.
Maybe if you wrote an over optimistic trashy novel or Americanised short story for tea time middle England housewives you might have come close.  A story where the main characters, school friends, breeze together after many years apart and get on like it’s only been an extended summer.  These novels aren’t based in reality, are they?

Yesterday I went to a school gathering/reunion with about 15 other people.  I guess they held on to thier own different levels of anticipation as I did.  Then out of the left field we all got together and had a fantastic time.

All thanks have to go to Mr W who as soon as friends reunited became a free service started a poke, jiggle and buzz campaign of all the people he knew from school.  Nothing major, just a blatant use of this new free feature to see who may or may not respond.  This in it’s self lead to a few conversations between freinds and one of the people he buzzed said he found things worked a lot better for him over on facebook.  So over I popped to facebook and after getting Mr W to move over I set about converting as many people across as possible.

Now, two months down the line, there’s 30 plus school buddies that have been facebooked, chatting and testing the ground with regards a gathering.  A gathering that started as a get together of five or six of mates who used to hang out together and turned into a free for all of “get your asses over to the pub, for old time sake”  A great series of events that I don’t think would have happened if Mr W hadn’t pushed the ball to start it rolling.

So at 6:55 I’m the first one in for the 7 o’clock meet and frankly I’m really looking forward to it.  If  you’d have asked me five or six years ago my thoughts on a reunion I might have had a different perspective on whether I should really be here or not.
Time however, mixed with family life, a multitude of facebook tentative “how are you’s?” and a healthy injection of nostalgia fuelled by photo’s from the 80’s (again thanks to Mr W) changed all of that.  It makes you realise that what you saw as critical points in your development are nothing but passing smoke and minor  distractions.  In the grand scheme of things we undervalue where school should lie in our personality and the ties we made shouldn’t just be formative ones.  The people we meet at school should be integral to our lives and not just the supporting actors for the first leg of the journey.  These people give us out our zeal and joie d’vivre that initially launches us out of school and into the big cruel world.

Mr Swann said it very concisely, whilst at the bar.  He turned to me and said

“We shouldn’t regret it, all the crap things that happened at school.  We all have to go through that stuff and we don’t realise what everybody else has to go through” taking a sip of his drink he said “It doesn’t mean anything.  Look we’re all here today and it’s fantastic.  Everything we all went through at school didn’t do anything to us or we wouldn’t be here.  We couldn’t have had that bad of a time or we wouldn’t have anything to talk about”

So fifteen or so of us gathered at a local pub and spent the evening dropping between groups, breaking off, regrouping, taking photo’s and being genuinely interested in each other’s lives.  Even with my closest work mates I don’t think we show this much undiluted interest in each other on a day to day basis.  Yes I have a good handful of close friends, but as with all busy lives they are the close friends you don’t get to see for months and you end up apologising for not seeing them, because tomorrow turned into a week and then into a month whilst you were blinking.  Then you end up in a room with people we haven’t seen for twenty years and the want to hear each others story is electric, the care we have our school friends that are going through difficult times is heartfelt and the camaraderie is tangible enough to pick up and take away in your pocket.

Anyone that’s reading this, for the sake of your sanity, your perspective and just for the sheer hell of it, get a reunion together now.  We weren’t out of the first meet 12hours and we are booking the next.