pasts coming together

I guess I've always been super-proud of not, necessarily, turning my back on my past or my past friends.  I keep up with everyone that I want to, regardless of geography or others' opinions. Note - everyone I WANT to!

But that means, of course, that the past collides with the present sometimes. 

The begining of the end of the intense period of friendship that E and I experienced began during university.  We're still friends now but this was the moment when we enterted the 'new phase' that we are now, arguably, in.  She came to visit me at Uni for a ball.  She didn't have the best of times.  Neither, frankly, did I.  She wasn't having the best of times at her college.  I wasn't sure what I was having.  It was awkward.  I don't think she came back.  We still wrote alot.  She told me about this guy that was making a play for her - she was finding it excrutiating - he was a Cornish organist with a pasty in a plastic bag.  She ended up marrying him.  It was a happy ending in every respect. The pain that she was experiencing - the loneliness - the uncertainty (both at college and when at home too) - caused me pain too.  But life moves so quickly, in so many different directions, when you're that age.

The 'boys' came a great deal.  They'd sleep, five or six of them, on my bedroom floor. They'd drink a great great deal.  The 20p pints in the Students Union were very exciting for those of them who had gone straight out to work.  Some of my newer friends found them interesting.  Some of them found them baffling.  Especially the incident around the time of a birthday that involved a blowup doll.  The increasingly incessant socialising covered off a number of different cities.  We visited each other - went to others' parties and Uni Events. Sometimes as a 'pack'.  Other times as individuals.  Lives crossed over and sometimes complicated social and sexual tensions would arise.  Old politics would meet new people who didn't care about the past.  They didn't know about it.  Did I mention that there was lots of drinking involved.

I guess the culmination was a plethora of 21st birthday parties - in a multitude of towns and cities.  Mine was at Uni but shared with S, who was at college elsewhere, and with R.  Old and New colliding.  People came from all around.  There was a suburban lads' drinking party in one room.  There were hippies in another, dancing and experimenting with Thai Chi moves. The next door neighbours' husband had died the day before.  We checked with her whether it was OK to carry on.  And we did.  We partied on.  You could say things like that then.....