It was the day of
the annual Christmas meet-up of a seemingly slightly random selection of my University friends. We went for a curry in Balham, which unlike Pocklington does hold a huge number of memories for me. We went for a curry in a restaurant that used to be Macnab's which many of you thought was the wine bar that I spent my 30th birthday in. You were wrong. Although I used to come to Macnab's too, my favoured bar was Goblins until that too closed down to become an Asian restaurant. What has become of thee Balham?
Anyway, over the last three or four annual meet ups I have confidentally predicted that one of us will be dead by the time of the next Christmas dinner, but so far my friends have refused to play ball. I have begun to think that the words "One of us will be dead by this time next year" are actually a kind of magic incantation that is keeping us alive and that if I say it every single year none of us will ever die. In a thousand years time we will still be meeting up, wracked with the pain of being the age of a millennium and all of them will be saying, "Please don't say it again! Let me die! Please let me die!" But I will keep saying it, because I will finally want to be proven right. It would be so annoying to have predicted something a thousand times and then the one time you don't it comes true. I wouldn't be able to live the shame down.
Everyone was on excellent form and we had the nicest time. There are only two of us left who are not in long term monogomous relationships, me and
Ben Moor. Worried that we were objects of ridicule amongst our procreating, happily ensconced friends, I suggested to Ben that me and him should get married in a civil service. It wouldn't be a gay thing (even though I do have a slightly unnatural interest in his bum) just a way for us not to be alone. I think that would be nice if friends could get married in this way. Ben was not keen on my excellent drunken notion, perhaps aware that he would always be playing second fiddle to
Zach Braff. I was quite insistent that we should give it a go. It would be an interesting adventure. And loving relationships don't have to be about sex. At least then I might get married before I am 40. But no Ben is too selfish to think of me. I hope his bottom prematurely sags so he has the bum of an old man before he is 40. Then no-one will marry him and he'll wish he hadn't been so dismissive of what, let's face it, will be the best offer he has ever had.
So then we discussed what we should do if one of us does die. Should we replace that person with one of our other friends who are inexplicably not invited to this event? Or should each of us, once we have shuffled off this mortal coil, be substituted by our eldest son (no girls must be allowed to come to this occasion ever, even if the Brussels Eurocrats dictate that we are being sexist in this tradition - we shall resist them)? We quite liked that as an idea. It would give the childless members of the group an incentive to breed, as well as the men who have been unlucky enough only to have girl-children to carry on trying like some kind of modern day Henry VIII. I felt that the kids might not be so keen to come along to dinner with a load of old farts, though others felt that it would have been something they would have loved to do for their own fathers.
Personally I favour the idea of leaving an empty seat for the deceased member of this club. With a pint of lager left in front of it. And this should carry on so that when two of us have gone we will have two empty chairs and so on. What I like about this is in about fifty years time there will only be one of us left and he will be forced to organise a night out, book a table for nine at a restaurant, order nine drinks and then eat their dinner alone, crying into their curry, wishing it was them who had died first, so old and so alone. That will teach them.
It wasn't all so morbid and was a wonderfully happy and moving occasion. We don't see each other so much these days and it is great to catch up. My boys are growing up.
I certainly have grown up a bit since the photo attached that Ewan recently sent me from around the time we all first met. Oh God, imagine how unsaggy my bum was then. I will doubtless also add a picture of tonight to this entry as soon as I have one, so you can get a real idea of the savagery of time.
