Cruising the past

Soon I'll get a job writing tabloid headlines...

Anyway, I have a folder signed by all my friends from a musical cruise when I was 14, and searched them all on Friends Reunited today as I was too tired to go anywhere. I went without my school, so was attached to one in Ipswich, so the first task was to get a name for it, which I did. Out of about 30 people I found maybe 5, including one from that school where I met maybe 15 people as I had to follow them most of the time for official duties like trips.

It was a similar experience to Big Brother in a way, except for when we landed every few days, but we were shut in a space with maybe 1000 people but did get to know maybe 50 pretty well over a two week period, including one of the best selection of girls you could imagine. Musicians tend to make the best friends for me as we share many similar interests and backgrounds (ie middle class kids being taught classical music once they've learnt to read), so this bunch became very close to me in that time but most lived far far away.
I kept up with two of the girls when I got home. One was local and absolutely bloody fantastic. I rushed her a bit (use your imagination) in my enthusiasm and that sent her packing after a week. The other contacted me, invited me to stay for a weekend, and then pointed out her boyrfiend in the pub who was 5 years older than me. At least I had a nice holiday if literally nothing else, including being introduced to James Bond films in a double bill which I'd previously never bothered with.

Then the third was 10 years later (story told before alert) with Christine from Farnborough when I discovered via the musical connections a good friend of her who put us back in touch. Looking back she was the second best of all possible wives I could have met (the best was torpedoed by a bitch of a mother) and actually they were very similar. But at the time Farnborough seemed like Penzance travel wise, and as she still seemed to act the same way she did ten years earlier I decided to soldier on locally. What a mistake. Many years later after realising what I'd done, found from her mother she'd become a financial wizard (manager at least of a large organisation) and was married and living in South Africa. My wavering may have had a part in her future as she was a distinct chance, having remembered every event of the earlier cruise as if it was yesterday, and still forgiving me for walking off with someone else. Remember what I said yesterday about playng hard to get... Talk about karma.

Anyway. These guys will all be around 45 now, and the women worn and beaten uterally, after averaging 2.4 children and way out of reach of my own gametes. But sagging tits apart, there were a number of people there who were a good laugh, and for my first friends reunited mass search looked for more male than female. One will forgive me for naming him (like he'll ever read this, and I'm not being rude), simply because of his autograph. He was the only person I spent time with right through, as otherwise I bounced around from one girl to another (5 in all) and meeting new guys, sticking with a small bunch but John was always around as well. The only reason I mention him is his last name was 'Boa', but his signature read 'Bog'. OK, that was tonight's great anticlimax, but at 14 I was allowed to think it was funny.

As I knew where he lived I looked him up directly years ago, probably located him and sent an email, which was ignored. So sod him! I didn't keep in touch afterwards as he lived 500 miles away, so knew I was unlikely to see him again. The other two guys I met were both from Ipswich and were what you would nicely call the geeks and anoraks of our dormitory, but lovely blokes. One got the piss taken out of him constantly by his own schoolmates, but I reckon will probably be the one with the PhD now, and the other was I suppose like someone from P.G. Wodehouse, the sort of traditional English type from about 50 years earlier, but of course, they were from Suffolk...

So now I wait for even one response. I know most were the right people, and a few may have been the same name and age but wrong person. But in 31 years I haven't gone over the events and people of the cruise except with Christine and the friend I went with who is still around in the background. No doubt 75% will have forgotten who I am, as most people tend to live in the present, but from those who don't can usually (like Christine) go over the past minute by minute, as if they were there. It surprises me why far more people don't, as whenever anything became remotely interesting or unusual my mind went into record mode, and can feel exactly what I did when I recall it, as well as replaying the whole lot like a film. I assumed this was part of our makeup but maybe not everyone does it so well as I do.
Or that's their excuse for forgetting me...

Technically none of the girls (now women) are even targets, as the other good one didn't tell me her last name, and I'd already blown it with the others sooner or later. Plus at least three lived in Scotland, and if they turned me down then I doubt I'd get another go. It's a social thing, and I'd actually like to get in touch with the two guys from Ipswich to see what they're doing. There was also someone called Dave, from Mansfield, who taught me more jokes in two weeks than all the previous years, and have been used ever since whenever required. He also described himself as a poet, so may still be in that field. There was an American, Wally, from an RAF base while his father was posted there, who was an amazing guy, and finally Marius, a typical London Jewish intellectual, whose father was a classical musician and was the sort of bloke it was amazing I'd never bumped into in my normal circles before or since as he was a composite of everyone else I knew in it, especially the Golders Green/Hampstead lot from school. I actually found his family website and even they haven't got him on it!

Well, this explains why I spent half an afternoon looking up old friends. Two weeks with a bunch of entertaining eccentrics, days on the piss (drinking age limits don't apply in Spain and thereabouts) and seeing some amazing places left a long-lasting impression, and nowadays I'd love to meet such people again, but without the travelling part. We have a number of people like that at Funtrivia, but most live in different countries rather than distant parts of my own.
So if one at least gets back to me maybe I'll maintain a little link with that part of my life, and they'll always be welcome to pop in if they're in London.