Is it really a year since the last gathering?
A Winning Day, Culminating At Bill’s For A BBYO Youth Club Regathering, 1 June 2017
Yes.
This regathering of the youth club crowd has been going on for a few years now and has settled on the second May bank holiday week, mostly for practical reasons to do with school half-term and those involved in teaching.
This time the turnout was even bigger than the previous year, with the re-appearance of Ivor Heller, a first visit from David, Ivor’s “big” brother (all adjectival things are relative), plus a special guest appearance by that giant personality, Simon Jacobs.
Booking Bill’s for this group is an odd business. We’ve been there several times now, but I always deal with a different person on the phone for the booking – they won’t take on-line bookings that large. This year they didn’t seem to want to take such a large booking at all. When I pressed the point with the manager, explaining that we are a regular, reliable group, they reluctantly took the booking. Perhaps such places get a lot of large group no-shows or something – but they could always take a deposit rather than almost turn good customers away.
Anyway, once it was booked and we turned up, we were very well looked after, as we have been previously.
The waitress did a grand job of snapping all of us looking cheery and engaged in the above photo. Eighth time lucky, eh?
A few members of the clan who have been before couldn’t join us this year; Jacey and Natalie for example. Wendy didn’t join us in person this time but did join for a while via Facetime – that was a first for this gathering but might not be a last. Some time soon we’ll probably need a video link between London and Hollywood…or something of that ilk.
Without meaning to repeat myself, I do really feel at home with this group of people. The years seem simply to peel away and it really is like a gathering of the youth club; just forty years on. None of us has really changed that much since our late teens. Of course we have all lived several decades of adult life and had some very different experiences since our youth, but the essence of our personalities and why we gelled as a group back then is still there.
It was a very enjoyable evening and several of us, me included, already seem to be looking ahead to the next one.