There’s going to be a school reunion next year. The Class of ’68 from our local Comprehensive School are being invited to get together, some of us for the first time in 54 years. I know that people are genuinely excited at the prospect of friends being reunited. I am not so sure.
Many years ago, I did attend a reunion of sorts in a local pub. There was a patchy attendance, to say the least, and clearly the majority of my fellow pupils decided against the idea. I didn’t quite regret my own attendance but I am not sure I got anything out of it.
There were a couple of people to whom I was close in attendance and, somewhat embarrassingly, more people that I didn’t know or recognise. The names sounded familiar but there was nothing to talk about.
I suppose the fact that I was now Rick and not Richard, or the dreaded Rich, didn’t help. I always hated Richard and Rich and loved it when my Dutch family called me Rick and Ricky. They would occasionally refer to me as ‘Reeshard’, which I hated too, but very soon in my school life I gave up trying to persuade people to call me by the name I wanted to be known as. Worse, some people called me ‘Mole’, an unkind nickname handed to me at Junior School when I would have been around seven or eight years old, so-called because I had a keyhole shaped birthmark on the right side of my face. I wasn’t upset when people called me Mole: I just didn’t like it and it was one reason I had two lots of surgery to have it removed, to be replaced by a permanent scar, which still looks as though I have been ‘glassed’, quite possibly in a fracas outside the pub. I’m hard, I am. (Spoiler alert: I am not.)
Numerous other reunions from my old school have since taken place, covering multiple years. I scrolled through the list of invitees and attenders and concluded that if I had attended, it would have been an evening of stilted and awkward conversations with people I did not know.
My closest friend, Old Pal Nick, died over a year ago and my efforts to make contact with another dear friend from school have led me to conclude that, on the basis of available evidence, he is dead and has been for maybe 17 years. I am still in contact with a couple of dear friends from school days and it is my intention to meet up with them sooner rather than later. They seem to be as keen to attend a formal reunion as I am, which is to say that they aren’t.
Thinking about it, there are probably good reasons, at least to me, why I have not kept in contact with some old friends. One, who was quite close, is now a big supporter of Nigel Farage and whichever political party he owns at the time. I have to say that I have issues with this, issues that I cannot, in all honesty, put to one side. It’s just me. I would find it very difficult, perhaps impossible, to be close friends, or even distant friends, with anyone who holds the same views as Farage. And while I happily engage with Reform Party UK Ltd supporters, maybe in the pub as I have done before, I cannot imagine enjoying a social occasion with people who would, had they been around at the time, have refused entry to the UK to my Norwegian grandfather, an economic migrant, and my Dutch mother who came here to marry my father. There is another aspect to all this. If I had really wanted to see my old friends from school, wouldn’t I have gotten round to it before now?
But then again, maybe I should go along, after all? It’s not that any of us are getting any younger, is it, and perhaps getting together with people I haven’t seen or been in contact with for over half a century will be a genuinely joyous occasion, conjuring up long-forgotten memories, some happy, some sad?
In terms of learning, school was a waste of time and (lack of) effort. I am reasonably sure that I didn’t earn anything worthwhile in all of my school years. I picked things up along the way. I can only offer an educated guess when I suggest my inability to learn anything was down to my mental health issues and undiagnosed ADHD. After all, these things didn’t apparently exist when I were a lad. So, all that is left of my school memories are the people, the vast majority of whom I lost contact with the day I left school forever.
I haven’t ruled out attending the reunion just yet. 2027 is a long way off and I am not going to tempt fate by casually assuming I will last that long. The main organiser is someone I like a great deal, so let’s see how it goes. Greta Garbo never said, “I want to be alone”. I do, almost every day. And maybe when the reunion comes along I will be again.
