Don't Look Back

Last night I watched The Big Chill, I mean This Life +10. Why, I’m still not really sure. I never really took to the show when it was first broadcast. Maybe because I wasn’t of that generation: a bunch of shallow, whiny arseholes. And this is coming from someone who really loved thirtysomething.

Why watch it? Maybe it was being flush with New Year optimism. Or maybe it was simply due to a strange fascination. Watching it I was trying to remember just whom the hell I used to hang out with a decade back. Our friend H had been part of a group of people I gravitated to, but it was still a while before I really got to know him. There were the studio folk, now gone.

For everyone who fell by the wayside, would I want to find myself back in their company? When the Friends Reunited website gained in popularity, I sniffed around some of my school listings. Fine, if you stayed put. But in the course of my education, from the very first primary to the Esteemed School of Art, I went to eight different schools/colleges.

With so many faces, so many years ago, I found it taxing trying to remember anyone. Although I eventually tracked down some alumni from the Grammar School and exchanged emails, it soon occurred to me that all we really had in common now was for those few, brief years we sat in the same classrooms.

When the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out, I caught it with the lass I was seeing at the time at the Odeon West End on the south side of Leicester Square. As we passed through the cinema foyer, one of the managers present called out my name, which came as a shock. Apparently we had been at the Grammar School together. While I was obviously still recognisable, I couldn’t place his name or remember him at all. Which was embarrassing.

Oddly enough, one of my contemporaries from Sixth-Form College works at the Empire cinema on the north side of Leicester Square. I ran into him at screenings of The Mummy Returns and Pearl Harbor. The lack of films I’m eager to see has meant that I haven’t been back to either cinema.

I suppose there are folk from a long time back that I exchange Christmas cards with and possibly a couple of emails over the course of the year to briefly catch up. But I haven’t seen them in person for a good while. Everyone moves on and I’m terrible at keeping in touch.

Amongst the current circle of friends, I discovered that Our Pal once worked at a design studio with a girl I knew at The Esteemed School of Art. He actually met up with her again at a company party just before Christmas and his opening line was that he had seen a photograph of her wearing my clothes – all very innocent, I assure you.

She was a fiery character when we knew her but has apparently mellowed some. Rather than simply give her my email address, he gave her this blog address instead. So Mon, if you’re reading this, the complete profile page has a link to my email.

I guess the lifestyle growing up meant that I got used to leaving people behind. Working at different companies in my career continued the nomadic existence. Now that I’ve finally settled down some, doing what I want and what I’m good at, things should change.

In fact, there is a ballerina I haven’t see for a couple of years and wouldn’t mind getting back in contact with. But only so I can get her knickers down.