School Reunion

Last night was weird. I went to my school reunion. I would like to say that it was an interesting experience, but it was just odd. Everyone was very much the same... only bigger. I went with my friend Simon, who I’d seen at Hollowell last week. I'd arranged to drive so he could have a drink. After the initial 'hello, how are you,' I started to regret it. The only thing worse than a school reunion is a school reunion sober!

Nah, it wasn't all that bad. Just a bit boring, really. Once you find out who's doing what job, how many children people have, and that everyone is still living in the area, there isn't much more to say. I think my mum put it well: 'If you were good friends, you'd have stayed in contact anyway.' Dad admitted to never having been to any of his saying: 'You'll find that all the people you didn't like have changed immensely... and you still don't like them.' lol How he'd know, not having been, I’m not sure. But he was dead right.

Soooo, glad I went, I think, if only to see what people look like now. It's nice to know everyone seems to be really happy and getting on with the things they want to do, but I don't think I’d repeat it. What surprised me most was that a large proportion of them have remained in contact, and see each other regularly, because they all still live in the same place. I once read a statistic that said '80% of people never move outside of their home town.' I thought 'how can this be?' Especially with jobs and travel as they are, and people going off to uni. But, after uni, it's truly amazing how many end up where they were before. I'd say 80% of the people there on Friday were still in their home area or very close. Not that that's a bad thing, it just surprised me. Especially as we seemed to spend most of our school years discussing how we'd get out of there.

The reunion was at Fat Cat's in Northampton, which had a nice beer garden. Simon and I stayed for a good couple of hours and then headed over to Rugby for a last drink and a chat away from the hubub.