GOOD friends are like good wine.
You put them in a cellar for years, they get dusty and age gracefully. Then when you pull them out 11 years later, they taste great!
OK, maybe not.

But something like this happened recently when a friend and I met up with a girl we used to go to school with and hadn’t seen for more than a decade.
I say girl – the reason we met up was as a surprise to mark her 40th birthday.
Dear me, but time does fly, whether you’re enjoying yourself or not.
It really does seem like yesterday – OK, maybe last week – we were all at secondary school together.
Then, just the other day, we parted company to go to different universities.
But we kept in touch, even when she got married and went to live on the other side of the universe (well... Oldham).
Apart from Christmas and birthday cards, we hadn’t been in contact since a wedding 11 years ago. Until her husband rang up out of the blue to arrange a secret meal out in Lark Lane to celebrate her 40th.
She was certainly surprised to see us – pleasantly, I hope.
And so we reminisced... the years fell away, and we were 13 again, sniggering at the English teacher who used to reek of smoke and beer every afternoon, chewing gum to hide it; laughing at the physics teacher who called everything ‘stuff’; remembering the absent-minded history teacher who took us on a trip to York and always seemed to be lost.
Then there was the catching up to do – the number of marriages, divorces and children our families have notched up in such a short time is quite frightening.
Let’s hope it’s not another 11 years before we meet again.

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