Where’d you go? #2

This is a picture of Monty enjoying Windsor Castle last night. I briefly had a chance to catch up with my old dear friend Larry. We’ve been friends since we were 17 years old and spent many years partying together through college, university and into our early twenties. We’ve been through enormous highs and really deep lows. Some inflicted by ourselves, some inflicted by the actions of others or by the way the world is in general. The saddest part of last night is that we had about ninety minutes to catch up on the last nine months of our lives when we last had ninety minutes together. Where does the time go? How does it get filled with so much work that the simple act of hanging out with no purpose gets relegated to ninety minutes in nine months? Admittedly, we’ve made it hard on ourselves by not finding the time. “If you wanted to you’d make the effort” some people may think. Perhaps so. But last night was making the effort. Effort to keep friendships going when they were previously effortless? This world separates us into job roles and geographical spaces that sometimes make ‘keeping in touch’ difficult. And then we are encouraged to adopt technologies that reinstate the connection through social media! But that is just an extension of the noise. It is just information and sentiments. It is not the same as sharing a laugh with somebody in the room. Here’s me and Larry last night, aged 30 with Monty on my shoulder. Below that is me and Larry at the University Summer Ball in 2000.