An email arrived in my inbox this morning from somebody I have not seen for about 8 years – my closest friend for a couple of years back before I got all sensible, and my comrade in more drunken adventures than I am willing to recount. She was the one who found me curled up around the base of the washing line in the pouring rain in the early hours of the morning.

Until the email arrived, it hadn’t really occurred to me that the world had continued turning. I am no longer the same person with the expendable income, the idiotically optimistic ideas about the world, and no ties. Somewhere along the line I became responsible. It wasn’t a deliberate choice – it just kind of happened – it’s probably called something awfully sensible like “growing up”. At some point my reason for getting out of bed became the needs of others – four others at last count.

John Lennon famously said “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” – and it came to mind this evening while thinking about the journey the last eight years has taken me on. Courtship, marriage, house ownership, career change, new friends, weddings, funerals, births, adoptions, children, fatherhood… the list goes on and on.

We are always moving fowards – working towards the next goal. Sometimes it’s nice to reflect – to remember the times we cherished the most – and to make the effort to find the people who mattered the most.