Revisiting the past

WHEN I celebrated my 50th birthday, sadly a more and more distant memory, I produced a list of 50 things I had never done and gave myself the objective of doing.

Many of these were banal in the extreme, for example, involving travel destinations.

Some tasks were slightly more physically challenging, involving weekends of kayaking, clay pigeon shooting or archery, and others were verging towards the masochistic, such as climbing my first-ever mountain, followed by two others – all supposedly within a 24-hour period.

Three entries on what may be described as my ‘bucket list’ seemed incredibly straightforward.

I had realised that in my 50 highly sociable years I had never managed to have a ‘lock-in’ in a drinking establishment.

There had always been a seedy glamour about a pub lock-in that appealed, and I was always envious of friends who spoke of being out until dawn.

Surely that could not be too difficult to arrange?

I had always liked the idea of going backstage at a gig, although I suspected that the reality would be being huddled in small talk with strangers in a backroom, with curling sandwiches and warm lemonade, rather than spending half-an-hour in deep conversation with Mick Jagger.

The other idea was to arrange a university reunion. Ours was originally mooted at the beginning of lockdown and had already been cancelled in three occasions.

So, October 2021 it was. Seven of the class of 10 were coming.

What would it be like to spend an evening with people whom we had not seen for three decades? Would we have anything to talk about?

Pity the poor waitress plaintively asking, ‘are you ready to order your drinks?’, ‘are you ready to order your food?’ as the conversation effortlessly and enthusiastically flowed.

What was fascinating was how the evening was such a ‘safe place’ for everyone, and how openly everyone was able to speak about challenges, as well as successes, that they had encountered over the intervening decades.

‘Therapy’ is not the word, maybe ‘privilege’ for having access to such an accomplished, honest and fun group of people.

There was also the pleasure of catching up on well-worn half-forgotten stories as well as ones I did not know but sound extraordinary in hindsight.

We spent a year in France, in different locations. I discovered that two of my then 20-yearold classmates, one male and one female, had separately been deposited at a service station on the M6 with six months’ worth of luggage and the task of hitch-hiking to their respective destinations. All this without a mobile phone.

At the time it did seem rather ‘characterbuilding’ and is pretty much inconceivable from today’s perspective.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers, they successfully reached their destinations. This would still almost definitely be the case today, but I can’t imagine many people attempting it.

The night wore on, eventually four of us remained and the stories continued to flow.

The bar we were in thinned out, and eventually it was time to go.

To my surprise the doors had been locked, and the staff had departed – so while it was not how I had expected my first ever lock-in to occur, I think I can tick off both ‘University Reunion’ and ‘Lock-In’ from my list.

If any reader can organise a backstage pass to the next Rolling Stones tour, please let me know.