David Newnham isn’t sure he wants to relive the best days of his life
I have never revisited my old school. Not once. Of course I have driven past the place from time to time; kerb-crawled outside those over-familiar exits and entrances. But go back? Never.
Nor did I join the old boys’ society (no girls in that club - it wasn’t that sort of school) or make much effort to keep in touch with individual friends, of whom there were many.
Why did I make such a complete break? I can’t remember. Were they the worst of times? Certainly not. But then they weren’t the best of times either.
I remember one night, at the age of 14, writing a letter to the big, grown-up me in the future. “In case you are ever tempted to think that your schooldays were the happiest days of your life,” I wrote, “THEY ARE NOT.” I never received the note, of course, although I get so much junk mail these days that I might well have discarded it in error (“To me in the future”? That’s got to be some financial services marketing wheeze). But I do have in my hand another piece of paper, passed to me recently by someone I met at an evening class.
It says “www.friends reunited.co.uk”, and it’s the address of a website that puts people in touch with former classmates. “Everybody at work is going on about it,” said my new classmate. “Why not try it?” Why not? All you do, it seems, is register the name of your old school, the date you left and your current email address, and anybody interested in contacting you will do so through the organisers, an outfit called HappyGroup Ltd 2000.
You can say what you are doing now, but you don’t have to. You can give your old nickname, but it’s not obligatory (phew!). And in future, and for a small fee, you can enter into all manner of arrangements whereby your circle of old friends expands automatically.
As I key in my details, I imagine them sitting by their computers, waiting. They are older now, although their faces, strangely, are exactly as I last saw them.
Will they welcome me? They have no reason not to. Yet still I hold back, like a child on his first day at school.
All that remains is to hit that “return” key. But do I really want to go back?
