Old friends...

As in, friends from a long time ago, although as most of us in the pub last night are hitting 50 this year then it could mean old in the literal sense.

To set the scene, back in the 1960's the suburb of Leeds where we lived (and most of us still live) had a "village" feel about it, it actually had been a village 80 years ago when my house was built so that probably helps, but in the 1960's it was suburbia in a Norman Rockwell sort of stylee and a huge group of us kids would spend evenings after school and summer holidays playing football, we all went to local schools and the football team continued on until some of them were well into their 30's, not that I ever got involved in strenuous activity mind, but a few of them are still trying to play competitive football this year and finding that muscles don't work but snap when you are 50 years old.

But over the years most of the group have gone their seperate ways, moved away from the area chasing a career, one in particular moved to the USA where he still lives 20-odd years later on the shores of Lake Michigan, he visits the UK every few years and last night had asked if we could all have a pint in The Fox together.

It was a good turnout, people made the effort and travelled some distances to be there and we ended up with 20 or so individuals and their wives, some of whom I hadn't seen for 30 years. In amongst the crowd were four individuals that I went through the same high school class with and we compared notes in our 50th year and realised that some of our class have started dying already, you get a strange feeling of your own mortality at times like that but on the other hand another strange sense of imortality in that old friends who you haven't met for 30 years don't seem to have changed at all.

This happened to me last night when I met Vaz, I sat next to Vaz on my first day at Cookridge County Primary Schoolwhen we were both 8 years old, we both went on to High School together and were in the same class there, Vaz was a genius at maths, so good that when he went to university and had earned all the honours in mathematics that they could bestow upon him, they asked him to stay and lecture and all these years later thats what he still does, lectures all over the world in maths and electronics, none of which was important last night, careers and jobs weren't discussed, weren't boasted over, you don't do that with really old friends, when you go back as far as the years before careers took over then it doesn't matter how important your job is or how much money you make or don't make.

The last time I saw Vaz would have been when I left High School at 17 years of age and yet last night, 33 years later when he walked in the pub I recognised him instantly and it was as if we'd just not seen each other for a few weeks. The same thing happened with another old school friend who I met at a rugby match in Newcastle last year, I'd arranged to meet him outside the ticket office and stood there waiting with my brother in law, he asked who it was we were waiting for and when I told him that it was someone who I hadn't seen for 33 years he told me I was crazy and how would we recognise each other - just then I saw my old friend from 50 yards away across the car park, and he recognised me at the same time.

Its an amazing thing when that happens, you talk about what you used to do as kids and you both tend to have the same memories and the friendship is so easy to pick up and walk with for a short while before you go your seperate ways again - when Vaz left the pub last night I told him I'd see him again in another 30 years time, we'll be 80 then, I hope we've both kept our marbles.


Over the past few years I've been writing what I grandly call "my memoirs", they are here on the JerryChicken web site, theres a lot more to post and maybe I'll update it again today, and then some day put it all in some sort of chronological order, it keeps me amused anyway.