Friends Reunited

A few weeks ago the husband and I had the great pleasure of returning to his college at Oxford to take part in a writers’ day, and he had the even greater pleasure of renewing his acquaintance with some of his old classmates.

Two or three of the husband’s old college friends turned up with the express intention of seeing and spending some time with him. It was lovely. It was so lovely, in fact, that we all went home with a warm glow, and we all frantically exchanged e-mails for several days afterwards. I even wrote about it in this blog.

This weekend the husband and I drove down to Dorset to spend an experimental weekend with Sean and Jacqui. Sean and Dan were best mates at uni, classmates, drinking buddies and housemates, too, for a while. Dan designed the logo for Sean’s rowing crew... You know, that sort of thing .

They had lost touch, back in the eighties or early nineties, when it was actually possible to lose touch with people, because there was no such thing as social networking, and they quite literally hadn’t seen each other for twenty years. 

I’d met Sean a couple of times in Oxford in the eighties, but neither the husband nor I had met his wife, Jacqui, at all, and we were descending on her home. In fact, I felt rather sorry for Jacqui. 

We have to leave this morning, and we have had the most wonderful time!

Not only have Sean and Jacqui been staggeringly good and generous hosts, but we have had stuff to talk about... lots of stuff. We share politics and values, and there’s a vast crossover in tastes of... oh... music, movies, tv, books... you name it, we share an opinion or are happy to have a heated conversation about virtually anything. 

There was twenty years of history for Dan and Sean to catch up on, but there were also memories to dig up and examine. I heard stories that I haven’t heard before, and a new light was shone on the husband’s character. I think the same was true for Sean and Jacqui.

Dan and Sean seemed to fall back into an old friendship very easily, and, I think because they like each other enormously it wasn’t at all difficult for Jacqui and I to find thinks in common and to like each other too.

What a fantastic weekend! We talked and laughed, and ate and drank, and, God help us, I hope we get together to do it all again, very soon.

I’ve often said that if we couldn’t be bothered to stay in touch with people from the past then there probably isn’t much point reuniting with them. In this case I’m very, very glad we made an exception.