Changing Times

I have written many times on this blog about my family and their centrality to my entire existence. Everything is built around them to the extent that I have really removed myself from other people outside except when I have to see them or occasionally choose to. This hasn’t always been the case, however, and it gives an interesting insight into the way that my attitude to company has changed over the course of my life.

When I was at Primary school, my friends were centred around it. I suppose it was because I loved my time there so much and I didn’t really feel as though the people I lived near had anything like the same importance. At Secondary school that reversed because pretty much everyone there was so unpleasant. I went through a couple of years where I went from school to home and bar Trevor, my best friend at the time who had been the person who volunteered to show me around St Andrew’s, and who joined me at the Maths School, I had no other friends. Luckily, when I was 13 my Dad started up a scout troop and I made a bunch of really good friends through that, most of whom I saw outside of scouts on a regular basis.

When I started work, I had one very good friend there, Steve Reid who started on the same day. We got on extremely well from the start and he made an otherwise difficult time in a job I was completely unequipped to do a lot of fun. Along with Steve was another Steve (Parrett) who used his house to host countless parties whilst his parents were away working in the Gulf! I have mentioned Gavin who became my best friend and best man in another blog, but suffice to say he was really the centre of my life until Janet came along.

I wwent to Staffordshire Polytechnic for 3 years and made a group of incredibly close friends. Although I was 5 years older than they were I fitted in with them straight away and we remained close for a number of years afterwards, especially with Arfur (as Andy Mullard referred to himself!) whose family were incredibly kind and open to us.

When wwe went to Japan, there was no one but us. We really had to count on each other in a way that we hadn’t before and that was when I started to look inward. I don’t suppose I ever really stopped. The people I got close to over the years all started to drift away and I just accepted that as normal, because my parents didn’t have many friends from the earlier parts of their lives. Looking back, I can see that I made an unconscious choice, partly because we were struggling for money and therefore couldn’t go to visit people, that I would rely only on my family unit for everything. From that point I saw every friendship that fell by the wayside as just a normal part of life. It was easier that way, I think, but it also removed any responsibility for the breakdown from either party, although I was sure that in many cases it was only me who had kept the friendship going by keeping in contact. Looking at it now I think that by turning my gaze inward, not going out and not trying to find other ways to keep the friendships going I was at least as much to blame if not more.

Life has a way of leading you in different directions and it makes you feel as though things are inevitable. What if they aren’t?