Moving tribute to past but best is yet to come
IWILL shortly be moving house for the happiest of reasons: matrimony. The new marital home knocks the current little flat-ette into a cocked hat but even so in the run-up to the big day and the move there is a lot of preparation to be done. I have lived in my current abode for 24 years and I am one of those people who archives my life. I keep everything, cards, notes, invitations, pictures. They are all kept in folders marked in the relevant year. And I started early, so there are now the best part of 40 of them, the vast majority of which I have never opened since putting them away.
But moving (and matrimony) requires discipline, so it’s time for almost everything to hit the recycling bin and I’ve spent weeks going through the lot of them. And what a bittersweet experience it is. It’s been like going to a foreign country with an unknown me.
This is what I’ve found. I was a member of a nightclub called Legends. I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of a nightclub called Legends. I’ve just googled and apparently it was famous. I think it might have been the place where I met a beautiful pre-op transexual, decades before this sort of thing caught on.
I found cards from long-forgotten friends who I last saw decades ago. Most of those friendships ended not with a bang but a whimper, as so many do. But did I have any hint that that was to be our final farewell? Was there some sign that even if this was not an important relationship, it was about to slip quietly, and forever, away?
And then there are the friends I do remember but can no longer stand.What on earth gave me such bad judgment that I had anything to do with them in the first place?
There were invitations to marriages from couples who are now divorced. Apparently I provided a reference for a man who wanted to enter the European Parliament. He didn’t get in. I also found fond letters from someone, now a famous historian which transmuted, over a matter of months, into entreaties to buy his book.
The pretentiousness of the invitations! There was one for a black tie drinks party at a one-bedroom flat in Peckham (where Only Fools And Horses was set. It took place at the same time as the filming.)
The awfulness of the photos! Yup: I came to maturity in the 1980s, which was a fantastically good fun decade (I was once at a ball when Mrs Thatcher unexpectedly appeared and the publiclyschool-educated, stiff-upper-lip revellers were practically in tears to a man) but puff ball skirts, leggings and the frightful perm hairstyles were no one’s best look.
And I was so young… Why didn’t I realise it at the time? Why don’t any of us? It’s true, though, the past is a different country, and there comes a time when you have to walk away. And in my case, the reason couldn’t be bettered. Roll on the new.