{Cheese and Beans}

This weekend has served to remind me about the value of friendship, and of having a life. It’s easy to let work consume your life – in my case so much that I approached this weekend with a creeping dread that the time we were investing in social activities were taking away from time I might otherwise have spent working.

On Saturday morning, shortly before leaving for my inlaws, I wrote on twitter “Saturday morning, and the beginning of a slightly mad non-weekend. Freelance work, dinner with friends, and dinner with more friends to come”. Notice the italics.

A part of me was dreading a weekend filled with commitments – even if some of them were of my own doing. This is of course an entirely selfish point of view, perhaps engineered by a couple of stressful weeks at work, and freelance projects waking up. So many excuses. I have worked a little, but it hasn’t outwardly effected an otherwise memorable weekend; the kind we should make more effort to bring about.

Yesterday evening we visited some school friends of Wendy, and their young family. While the children happily played together in the way all small children seem particularly skilled at, we “grown ups” caught up on each other’s lives, ate, drank, and basically spent time together. It occurred to me on the journey home that it’s not complicated – all we did was spent time together, and we all enjoyed doing so. We didn’t need movies, or anywhere to visit – just each other.

Today we invited friends over that live fairly locally – a short train ride with their baby – and again, it struck me afterwards how easy it all was. Before their arrival this morning Wendy and I went a bit mad tidying around the place (that’s what happens when you are both busy all week, and then out all weekend), but once our guests arrived, we kicked back and relaxed. Again – good food, good conversation, and each other. It’s not complicated.

This weekend has also reminded me that in order to have anything worth writing about, it has to have happened to you. Life is the most interesting thing any of us has to pontificate about, and unless we get out there and experience some of it, we have little of any interest to share.

The question now is what part of life I might throw myself in the direction of.

A few of the people from my year at school are arranging a reunion this year. Quite why it has to be this year, I’m not sure – we’ll all be hitting 37 – surely 40 would have been a better number ? Last year would have been 20 years since we left. It really makes no sense at all.

As fun as it has been to get hear voices from the past on Facebook making encouraging noises about the prospect of seeing one another again, my gut reaction is to stay the hell away from any sort of reunion.

I have a couple of misgivings; one entirely pragmatic, and the other less so.

When the idea of a reunion first cropped up, everybody seemed enthusiastic. I’m not quite sure when, but suddenly all those who are either unhappily married, divorced, or still single suddenly started admitting all of their various crushes, and their excitement about perhaps seeing those people again. Some people who are happily married then got sucked in.

I’m not so sure I want to be a part of that.

There’s also the entirely irrational memory of not really fitting in at school. Sure, I had friends, but I was never one of the “popular” people. As an adult things seem to have turned around somewhat though – I have a half decent career, a house, a lovely other half, amazing kids… I wonder how difficult it will be walking into a room full of ghosts of the past.

As my other half commented – “there’s a reason you didn’t all keep in touch”.

Have you been to a school reunion? What was it like? How did you feel?

I grew up in small town England in the 1970s. I can still remember moving house when I was five years old, and spending the first nights on bare floorboards. I remember the sound of footsteps on the landing, and the novelty of stairs. I also remember being turfed out into the neighbourhood – probably on the first night – to make friends with the neighbouring children.

We made friends instantly – in the way small children do. Within days we were visiting each other’s houses, running riot through each other’s gardens, and knocking on each other’s doors to ask opening gambits along the lines of “Hello Mrs Smith, can Claire come out to play?”, or “Can I go on your garden to get my ball back please?”

Now think about it. When was the last time you saw any young children playing outside, unsupervised ?

I watched an interesting video on the internet some time ago – detailing a list of dangerous activities that children should be allowed to do; among them “playing with fire”, and “using knives”. The presentation showed inuit children gutting fish, and cooking it on an open fire. It strikes me that the presentation missed something much more basic – letting kids play outside.

Do you know the names of your next door neighbours? How about anybody else in the neighbourhood? I’m willing to bet (if you are from a similar generation to myself, or older), you knew everybody in the street – adults by last name, and all children by either first name or nickname. Your parents didn’t arrange play dates for you – you figured it out yourself. The only rule governing your adventures and exploration was “Dinner Time”, and “Bed Time” in the summer. If you weren’t back when dinner hit the table, you were in all sorts of trouble.

Adults were allowed to reprimand other people’s children too – and the children didn’t answer back. You would never tell your parents if Mr Jones up the road had told you off, because the punishment would almost certainly have been multiplied.

Forgive me for stepping into crackpot theory territory, but I tend to think there is a link between not letting kids play outside, and community vanishing in front of our eyes. If you don’t learn how to make friends of your own volition, you are not going to naturally form similar bonds later in life.

Technology is supposed to have come to our aid in the form of “Social Networking” – with the likes of Facebook and Twitter providing a back channel to our daily lives through which we can maintain friendships that would otherwise founder.

Social Networking is a the solution to a problem that didn’t exist. It allows community to form between self selecting group of people who are already known to each other – which is quite different than a real world community, where the members are brought together randomly.

On another level, social networking was created to assist us, when in practice it causes the most basic forms of communication – speech, and physical interaction – to erode.

You could argue that modern communication methods – social networks, and instant messaging – are causing the beginnings of H G Wells Morlock and Eloi – which we can distill into the disparity between the “haves” and the “have nots”. Those with the iPhones, Blackberries, Laptops and other such gadgets hide behind walls – both real and imaginary – pretending to form friendships with many they will never meet. Those without such modern “essentials” will meanwhile be helping, supporting, and talking to each other. Visiting each other unannounced.

When was the last time any of your friends knocked on the door without calling first ?

While catching up on the various thoughts of those I follow on Facebook, LiveJournal, Wordpress, Posterous and Tumblr early this morning (yes, I am mad), I chanced upon a really interesting post on Tumblr.

While wrestling with the idea of giving up the blog altogether earlier, conversation around me turned to resolutions – or rather "New Year Resolutions". I thought for a few moments and could not think of much worth achieving within the next year. For a while it seemed sad that I could not think of anything, and then it dawned on me that it was a good thing.