![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningIt was a very good weekend; but somewhat nostalgic. Two friends – married to each other – had a joint birthday party. On the way there, I couldn’t help but remember their first joint birthday party, thirty years ago.
There were lots of old friends there, as well as some very interesting new ones (professor of biodiversity, anyone? Although for one department to have twenty four professors seems a bit much. In my day, it was one professor per department. That’s inflation for you!), and some great conversations.
But there was also a fair bit of dissonance. Seeing my friends’ daughter make a beeline for the champagne just seemed wrong. To be told another friend’s daughter was now 32 and married just seemed bizarre. (I took photos at her first birthday party…)
Actually, photography was a recurring theme. D produced a picture I had taken oh thirty one years ago, and told me it was his favourite picture of A (it remains a good picture!); someone else I hadn’t seen for thirty years (though maybe paths crossed at a wedding or two in between) said that she still loved the pictures I took at her 21st birthday party – though her husband found it strange that most of the pictures were of her female rather than male friends (plus ca change).
The weather was glorious. People fell into the canal (two people, to be precise).
It was lovely to see everyone. It always surprises me how easy it is to pick up with old friends, though it shouldn’t, since it always is.
There was a somewhat depressing coda to all this nostalgia, though. On Monday morning I received an email telling me that another contemporary from my college has metastasised pancreatic cancer. Which I believe is usually terminal. Though friends and contempories of mine have died, it has always been through accident (in one case a terrorist bomb, in another a bicycle accident); never through “natural causes”.
After decades of catching up with old friends at weddings and birthday parties, we are clearly moving into the age of catching up at funerals.
There were lots of old friends there, as well as some very interesting new ones (professor of biodiversity, anyone? Although for one department to have twenty four professors seems a bit much. In my day, it was one professor per department. That’s inflation for you!), and some great conversations.
But there was also a fair bit of dissonance. Seeing my friends’ daughter make a beeline for the champagne just seemed wrong. To be told another friend’s daughter was now 32 and married just seemed bizarre. (I took photos at her first birthday party…)
Actually, photography was a recurring theme. D produced a picture I had taken oh thirty one years ago, and told me it was his favourite picture of A (it remains a good picture!); someone else I hadn’t seen for thirty years (though maybe paths crossed at a wedding or two in between) said that she still loved the pictures I took at her 21st birthday party – though her husband found it strange that most of the pictures were of her female rather than male friends (plus ca change).
The weather was glorious. People fell into the canal (two people, to be precise).
It was lovely to see everyone. It always surprises me how easy it is to pick up with old friends, though it shouldn’t, since it always is.
There was a somewhat depressing coda to all this nostalgia, though. On Monday morning I received an email telling me that another contemporary from my college has metastasised pancreatic cancer. Which I believe is usually terminal. Though friends and contempories of mine have died, it has always been through accident (in one case a terrorist bomb, in another a bicycle accident); never through “natural causes”.
After decades of catching up with old friends at weddings and birthday parties, we are clearly moving into the age of catching up at funerals.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-05-30 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 06:37 am (UTC)