37) My name is Richard, and I am a reunionaholic.
There you are, I’ve said it. I’ve admitted it. I’m owning it. And they say that’s half the battle don’t they?
The more I think about it, the more I realise I’m quite seriously ill with reunionaholism. (I’m not just weak-willed or easily led because we all know by now that addictions are really illnesses.) It inhabits every part of my life.
For instance, whenever I’m asked for an answer to the question, ‘What is your book about?’ by someone who clearly doesn’t give a toss and is only asking out of politeness, my stock one line answer is that it’s about a lost love. But I have just realised for the first time that it is every bit as much about the possibility of reunion.
You could say that whenever we reminisce, we are having a kind of mental reunion, and, starting with the title, reminiscing and its consequences are what ‘A Polaroid of Peggy’ is all about. And, in the first chapter and the last, it goes beyond that: there are specific references to school reunions. As I imagine is the case with most novels, fictitious events are to some degree modelled on real ones, and the setting for the school reunion in my book was not so different from the annual reunion of the Old Boys of Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School, the 149th of which I went to last Saturday.
I am not quite sure why I go. You’ll notice I don’t say ‘went.’ My addiction is ongoing. I’ll probably be going next year too, and the year after that, and the year after that, until one fateful day etc.
It certainly isn’t for the food. Catering for a hundred – about that many usually turn up – can’t be that easy, especially since B,H and S Grammar School was turned into a sixth form college a few decades ago so anyone who goes is either an old duffer with chewing issues or well on the way to being one.
You get a starter - soup or prawn cocktail - and a pudding - apple pie and watery custard or one strawberry cut into a hundred pieces and cream - brought to you by a jolly waitress, and a cold buffet for your ‘main’ which you have to collect yourself.
Presumably they reckon that if they made you get up for all three courses, they’d risk fatalities. Not that it would bother the other attendees. Whenever someone dropped a plate in the old school canteen – head cook: Deadeye Doris - there was a deafening cheer. The same thing would probably happen if old Chalky White,1934-39, suddenly pegged it whilst queuing up. Even now, only having to make one trip, the stress could easily do it. It’s not easy trying to choose between the quinoa and beetroot salad and the broccoli and feta, especially since they didn’t even have broccoli in your day much less feta. As for quinoa – “Quinn, Noah? I remember him. Got some prize for R.I. Went off sailing with a lot of animals, didn’t he?”
And after the cheering we’d probably all just trample over the body. One faculty that age definitely doesn’t diminish is your value-for-money drive. Just because old thingummy who was sitting next to you five minutes ago has gone to the Sixth Form Common Room in the sky doesn’t mean you can waste time. You’ve got to pile your plate up to the ceiling, dodder back to your table without one of your umpteen chicken thighs dropping off, gobble it all down, lick the plate clean, then get back up again for seconds.
And you’ve got a lot of drinking to do. One of the reasons the organising committee don’t bother to get Hester Blumenthal down to do the cooking is that they’d rather spend the money on drink. Never mind if the chicken is only a couple of generations down from the couple that sailed with dear old Noah Quinn. Who cares so long as every table has a plentiful supply of Aldi’s best?
Before we ate, our honorary something or other, ex-MP Ivan Lawrence, pulled his old school cap - c.1944 – out of his pocket and briefly modelled it before instructing us we all had to haul ourselves up by our zimmer frames to mumble grace before the God whom, at moments like these ,I only wish I could believe in. Because then I could ardently pray that He might deliver us from the speech that by tradition, comes as soon as lunch is over. It is, again by tradition, always delivered by an Old Boy you’ve never heard of but who, we are assured by Ivan, has some dubious claim to achievement in his chosen field, and who, with one or two very rare exceptions, seems to have a particular gift for endlessly droning on and on.
This year’s turn regaled us with all the thrills of working for the British Council for 40 years. In truth it wasn’t all bad, because it provided a convenient interlude for a nap which most of us need at our time of life. And, compared with some of the speeches we’ve been been subjected to, it was really quite exciting. The highpoint was the bit where he found himself in a hotel in Alexandria sitting at the next table to a fellow who looked quite like T.E.Lawrence and asked him to pass the salt. (Or did I dream that during my snooze?)
Not much more to report really, apart from a series of small unscripted interruptions that will certainly guarantee this year’s reunion its place in history. Every so often a fairly well upholstered and very well lubricated chap called, I believe, Tony Gillot leaped to his feet to bellow across the school hall – the very same one we used to file into for assembly and in which we were now eating – the latest England cricket score.
“Oshtrailyer undred ‘n fiffy two for shix!!!” and then about ten minutes later, “Nuvver wicket. Undred and shixty eight for sheven!” And sho it went on. Ivan seemed a tad disquieted but there’s nothing a mob of schoolboys – of whatever age – likes better than a spot of subversion.
“Go on Tony, you tell ‘em” urged the rest of us albeit silently. It felt almost as though, whilst egging him on, we were only waiting for the moment when some figure of authority in a black gown would grab Gilott by the ear and drag him off to the headmaster’s study.
Oops, almost forgot. There was one other thing. The affair always concludes with everyone hauling themselves to their feet one last time for the singing of the school song.
‘Absque Labore Nihil,
In work, in play, in life.
In rivalry of nations,
In boyhood’s friendly strife.
The race goes to the eager,
The laggard falls behind,
And ever to the bravest,
Do fortunes’ smiles prove kind.’
Absurd lyrics. Manifestly untrue. Absque labore nihil – without work nothing. Really? What about winning the lottery? Or being born the son of an oligarch or a minor royal? And what exactly is a laggard? Well me, obviously, because I don’t think barely passing five ‘O’ levels and then skedaddling as soon I could puts me in the front rank of high achievers school-wise. In fact, I think I can honestly say that the only thing that I really learned when I was there – really learned as in having not forgotten – are those words, the chorus of the school song.
Did I sing them – if sing is the right word – with pride? Not exactly. With a bit of embarrassment, yes, and with a little self-consciousness, but amongst that, I have to admit, a dash of fond affection too. With nostalgia I suppose - the fond, foggy remembrance not just of a bygone age, but of my bygone age.
Like I said, I am a reunionaholic. And not a recovering one either. This Thursday I am having lunch with a woman I used to work with about 30 years ago - then a girl! - and whom I will be meeting for the first time since. And I recently had an e-mail about the next annual JWT reunion, JWT standing for J.Walter Thompson the advertising agency I used to work for. I always go to those.
There was a sketch in ‘Beyond The Fringe’ (more nostalgia, more reuniting with the past) when Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and the rest assemble on the top of a mountain to await the end of the earth, and when the appointed hour comes and goes without armageddon, they all wander off saying to each other, “Same time, next year then.”
It’s pretty much like that with me and the Brighton, Hove and Sussex Old Grammarian’s lunch. Doesn’t make a lot of sense but it’s just what you do.
