My friends at School

One of the most important documents I own

Going back to mental health and progress in recent years, it is worth reflecting on learnings as part of the healing process that have perhaps surprised me; one was how important it was to re-connect with real people from my past.

I think this is true for whatever stage you are at on this journey.

A significant Collection of Interesting Characters… circa 1973

In a recent foray into the loft to declutter and search for missing photographic equipment, I came across a significant document of some age.

A grey tatty cardboard folder entitled ‘my friends at school,’ with eight passport sized photographs mounted inside with the signatures and names of the aforementioned individuals; a work of art from Middlethorne School, North East Leeds, dated around the mid 1970’s it was from a short and strange experiment of the then government to sandwich another institution between Shadwell County Primary and Roundhay School (yes Liz Truss went there AFTER I did).

No doubt, a highly prized documentary showcase for high achieving social climbers and likely forerunner to rather less appealing social media equivalents today.

My surprise and (once opened in its full glory) absolute joy, at recovering and viewing such an important document at the dusty bottom of piles of paperwork in my secret box of nonsense, was unprecedented.

The contents sang to me; the problem is, rather like the folder, relationships are easy to park on what can become a very dusty shelf.

We spend so much time pushing forward with life, trying to impress an any number of individuals that we don’t know, and so little time cultivating and keeping the important relationships that we have formed with the real people who matter most to us.

Many of these relationships date back to our earliest years, hence this stream of consciousness. Of course, with past relationships, not all of them need resurrecting.

But some do; and it is worth taking minute to think about that.

This got me thinking; so I put together some thoughts on my friends at school (and work) and how they helped and inspired me (yes even at the age of 60) and continue to do so today. The caveat here I think,  is that you need to be a certain age to realise the importance of time passed, or perhaps a more balanced approach would be to not lose touch with important contacts in the first place!      

I don’t want to expose all those poor individuals from ‘My friends at school’ here, it would not be fair to them, if they are by any chance reading (I know some are) then, they know who they are ,but no one else needs to.

But I am going to talk about one specific individual, because what we had was special; and I am so happy to have it back again.

Paul.

I’d been on holiday in Spain with family when my sister mentioned something important about Paul. It was something so important that time did not matter, so I got home and looked him up and I made the call.

This effort to look someone up and call them was the kind of effort that my old life had no time for. But now I know, unlike before, that some of the simplest of things you perform, are more important than most other things you do in your life. 

They say (whoever they are) that context is everything; thinking about others and their situation is such an easy thing to do; a phone call to an old friend can be so significant; and yes, it is OK to talk.

Next thing I know, I’m a fifty something year old; carrying out the routine I had performed daily but as a teenager, so many years have gone by without a single minute of thought around the people and places of that period of your life; and then BANG you are back in it and everything floods back into the memory, as though it was always clearly there waiting to be uncovered, unearthed, dusted down and enjoyed as new.

I’m on a Number 37 bus into Leeds, sitting upstairs at the front, surveying the streets and avenues as they fly by, getting off at Moortown Corner and walking pretty much the length of Street Lane, toward my old school, Roundhay, to meet at the The Flying Pizza.

This is not something I have done for three or four decades, so I am understandably rather excited when we meet up. To say there was a bromance here, would be an understatement; the laughter and tears of joy came along with the wine and conversation; the years fell away and the bond of childhood memories and shared experience totally filled in any missing history holes and paved them over with a newly built road to re-kindled friendship.

I am not the first person to get together with old school friends, that’s for sure; so how and why is it significant for any of us to re-group after such a long time?

Here is a (totally bonkers, I am sure he won’t mind me saying) person, an estranged school friend from the age of five, a stranger since the age of 21. Our lives took different paths and are now interestingly linked again after not seen each other for many years.

His opening comments are textbook Paul; forthright, insightful, factual and frank - “I’ve had three lives since we went to school”.

Yet he has not changed, and he claims the same in his memories of myself - so what really does time do to us, if we are still essential remembered as children after decades of ageing?

Paul has been married and divorced, has grown up children and now some grandchildren, has been on two or three career journeys; in short, he has lived a whole life that I never knew.

He moved around the country after we lost touch in the university years, it turns out we were living bizarrely close to each other, totally unaware while each growing families, ploughing out careers, following our beloved football team even - but never being connected, for no other reason that naturally drifting apart.

Having graduated to a new chapter and home, Paul will no longer be searching for enlightenment in his beloved Hackfall Woods, following a period of self reflection and re-alignment with his true self (and I can relate to that so much) he has found his near-perfect trajectory, and as luck would have it, so have I.

The hard miles have been done; at our stage in life it is important to acknowledge that.

For Paul, there will be no more meltdowns, no more battleships holed beneath the waterline; this is a new man; and over the coming couple of years he informs us that he was to be joined by his new partner Ruth; and it was an honour to play a role in the outstanding celebration of their joining together earlier this year; a truly happy event that marks the start of an exciting chapter for them both in Arcadia.

I don’t mind admitting that ‘My friends at School’ was triumphantly brandished at that wedding in June; the pages were pored over by Paul and Ruth’s children and friends; they marvelled at Paul’s picture and neat handwriting, exclaiming how he had barely changed in nearly fifty years; asking what had become of every other unlucky occupant of those grubby pages; ammunition for days of speculation and discussion, our lives, though we may not know it, are journeys of great interest to intimate friend and complete strangers alike.

I could write so much more about Paul and so many more of the characters in ‘My friends at School’ As an aside, it is worth disclosing the fact that in 1973 I could only actually find six friends to populate my booklet and so has in fact put my own details and photo in twice to fill up the pages; a schoolboy error.

I fear another whole post on the significance of this exercise may be required at a later date.

So, back to the true meaning of this week’s ramblings and the importance of my friends at school; what is my point?

My point is, everyone needs a Paul.

I reached out to him after hearing of his own personal family tragedy.

There was a reason, but there does not need to be.

The significance is that we picked up right where we left off, mainly by making each other laugh, but also by remembering what is important and skipping thirty or more years as if it was the garlic bread on the menu.

I totally understand that will not be the same for everyone; I was lucky to find the booklet, even luckier to find Paul in it.

Of course you don’t need the booklet, but everybody needs some good friends, whatever stage of life you are at, rediscovery of what once made you so happy is never a bad thing.

My new life knows the important things won’t wait any longer I can be seeing my old school friends and workmates every day in this life; if it’s not too late for me or you

Your friends at school and work should be so much more than those faded photos in the loft; I have written many more pages on other friends and important relationships that I did not want to lose the significance of here, these will come later and claim their significance too; I want them all to be included in our flock of remarkable people, to be part of a crowd around some scribblings that bind us together; it’s not really about sheep (or dogs) or our friends at school, its about you!

Please share and subscribe to ‘you can do anything’; it means a lot to have your time

Next week I will be concentrating more on CBT techniques with some tips I have learned from the last few years in identifying and tackling unhelpful thinking styles that are common to so many of us.

Thanks for reading; you can do anything.

---

Next Week: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

Help on the undesirable directions of our minds

---