AND FINALLY Memories still to be cherished

DO YOU ever think of people who pass briefly through your life, yet make a huge impression? It’s like falling in love; you think you will know them for ever; then they are gone.

Fifty- three years ago, in August 1967, I attended the Yeats Summer School in Sligo, Ireland. My boyfriend Philip drove me there, we camped behind the sand dunes in endless rain and I spent my days learning about my favourite poet while long-suffering Phil did … what? I never asked.

On the week-long course, I became friends with two fascinating people, an Oxford University undergraduate called Denise, and David, a U.S. postgraduate at Cambridge with whom I fell a little in love.

We talked about art and poetry, climbed hills, caroused, and (lectures ended) all piled into Phil’s old banger and drove to Dublin, sleeping in the car and at the YWCA.

The days of no money, high ideals, passion and hopes. At 20, I was convinced I’d connect with new friends for ever.

Two months later, back at University College London, I met the man I was to be with for 35 years and ditched Phil.

Five months later, I was married (in our second year) and the memories of Sligo were lost in the excitement of a new life. It’s hard for the email and social media generation to realise it took effort to keep in touch back then. So I never saw Denise and David again.

Then recently, my oldest schoolfriend dug out a letter kept since 1967. In youthful handwriting, I enthused about romantic days in Ireland and the wonderful people I’d met. And there were the names.

Denise Riley became a distinguished academic and prize-winning poet, whose poem about the death of her son (A Part Song) is one of the finest I have ever read.

David Esterly became one of the world’s finest woodcarvers (and a talented writer) and died last year. So that’s it. A flash of memory — re-found, untouched by age.