Friends Reunited
One happy by-product of writing this blog has been the number of old friends and colleagues who have come across it and have then been prompted to get in touch. Today, for example, I received an e-mail from Hugh Brown. Hugh now broadcasts in The Borders, but we worked together more than a decade ago in Glasgow.
A few months ago - also thanks to this blog - I made contact with Danny Pryce, a childhood friend from Easterhouse. He's now working in the south of England but we both had vivid memories of the time we got lost in the fog on the way home from school.
Now I see that the is launching a website designed to reunite former colleagues from the industry. It all reminds me of when I first discovered the site four years ago and made contact with the girl I fell in love with on my first day at infant school. She was the prettiest girl in the class, but had eyes only for a boy called Harry who sat next to me. I tried everything to get her attention; sweets, jokes, pulling faces, slapstick tumbles over the teacher's desk. But it was all in vain. She finally broke my heart by telling me that "Harry is much funnier than you!".
Still, all through primary school and into secondary I retained the slighest glimmer of hope that she would see the error of her ways. Harry, after all, was an unsophisticated oaf who clearly thought his goal-scoring prowess for the school team was the kind of thing that impressed the girls. I, on the other hand, had my own Thomas Salter chemistry set. Beat that football-head!
So we all left school and I never saw my first love again. Then came Friends Reunited and, sure enough, there was her name on the list of my old classmates. I sent off an e-mail and, a few days later, got a reply.
She had no memory of me whatsoever. I mean, you'd have thought she'd remember the boy with the strange Polish name. The name that was always called out last in the register. But no. Nothing.
And there was worse to come.
She'd only gone and married Harry!
