Around this time the previous year, my old youth club (Streatham BBYO) gang gathered at Bill’s in Covent Garden. We had done nothing of the sort for well over thirty years, but was a great success.
Linda had taken the lead organising the 2014 gathering and then asked me to finalise the details at the end. This is how she kicked off negotiations, in March 2015:
Hi Everyone,
Thought it would be good to meet again as its been a year in May!
Last year we met on a Thursday in the school holidays so thought we could try that again, what do people think?
The date would be 28th May, if that is not good for the majority any suggestions are welcome!
Then Ian I can pass it to you if it becomes complicated
Linda xx
Strangely, it proved incredibly easy to organise. Everyone was comfy with the date and everyone agreed that the company was more important than scratching around for a different venue, so Bill’s got the nod again.
Natalie had to drop out at the last minute this time, sadly, but still we had me, Linda, Sandra, Mark, Andrea, Jacey, Liza, Wendy, Martin and even a visitation from Ivor.
The atmosphere was partly tinged with sadness that evening, as news of Jeffrey Spector’s passing was only a few days old that night. Still, Jeffrey wouldn’t have wanted us to mope and nor did we.
Ivor told us all about his Hollywood movie prospects while Martin showed us the photographs he took at our infamous “fashion show” back in 1979 (I didn’t realise colour photography had been invented back then). Details of both of those interludes shall remain under wraps for the time being.
Again it was lovely to see everybody and again it seemed impossible that so many years had passed and that most of us had felt disinclined to meet up like this for such a long time.
After two such gatherings, it seemed inevitable that there would be more get togethers…as indeed there have been.