‘Just tell them that you were thinking about them and want to say hello and hope that they’re well.’ I stood slack jawed in awe at how easy women find anything to do with relationships.
‘You’re right,’ I replied. ‘That’s exactly the thing to do.’
Inspired, I wrote the following email and sent it to everyone that I had addresses for:
Dear [insert name of missing person here], It’s me, Mike Gayle, I was thinking about you recently and how ace you are and so I thought I’d just drop you a line to say, ‘Hello!’ Hope you’re well and would love to hear your news.
All the best,
Mike x
I sent this to five out of the twenty-six lost friends and for a moment or two felt really good about myself. Then four of the five messages were immediately bounced straight back. It was disheartening to say the least. To put it bluntly I was stuffed and I was about to embrace failure when an idea hit me. This was the age of social networking and what better way to catch up with old friends than to join every single social networking website on the internet? So that was what I did. I joined Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friends Reunited, Blogger, WAYN and even ancestry.co.uk and hoped against hope that at least a few of them would be on there. Sure enough I got lucky. Within an hour of joining MySpace I found four different old friends, and a few hours after joining Facebook I found another six, which given that neither website had even existed when I first became friends with these people made me feel really old. Gathering my wits about me, I copied and pasted my original email into messages to all those whose profiles I’d managed to locate, pressed send, then crossed my fingers and waited. Ten minutes later I got my first reply.
I first met Sam in the autumn of 1992. Having just graduated that summer and moved back home to Birmingham I’d been feeling a bit lost without the security of university life with its easygoing daily structure of lectures and nightly array of readily available social activities. Though most of my Birmingham friends had moved on, the few that remained did so because this was the town that they had moved to for university and had now adopted as their own. Out in Moseley one Saturday night with my friend Monica, I was introduced to Sam. Sam had long straight shoulder-length auburn hair, grey-green eyes and a cheeky smile that seemed even cheekier once she started talking with her broad Yorkshire accent. Though she dressed like a student (in all the time I knew her I don’t think I ever saw her wear anything other than jeans or cords) she actually worked for the local dole office and had moved down to Birmingham from Keighley a few years earlier to be with her boyfriend.
I can’t really remember what we talked about although I suspect that at some point we must have discussed the fact that she came from Keighley because I’d visited Brontë country with a couple of university mates only a few months before and had walked all the way from Keighley to Top Withens which was supposed to be the location of the main house in
Wuthering Heights
. I used to like to think the fact that I had ticked
Wuthering Heights
off my To-Do List of places to visit marked me out as some kind of literary romantic but I suspect that it actually marked me out as someone who needed to get out more.
After the pub we all went to a nightclub called Snobs, but then Monica had some kind of melt-down to do with her boyfriend so Sam and I spent the evening hanging out together. Sometime in the early hours of Sunday morning most of the group left but Sam and I decided to go for a walk at about three in the morning. We were both tired and more than a bit cold but we headed to Cannon Hill Park and ended up sitting on the swings talking about everything and nothing as though we’d known each other forever. From that moment onwards we were firm friends.
Sam’s message to me via Facebook perfectly captured the essence of the person I knew back then.
It’s you! How are you? I’ve been hoping that one day you’d pop out of the woodwork! I’m well, thanks, living in Leeds, working in IT and driving a Ford Fiesta! Still like good music though. Tell me your news! Seethee, Sam x
Though it was short it was both warm and funny (I particularly liked that word ‘seethee’ as though she were an eighty-year-old Yorkshireman). I replied outlining everything that had happened to me since we had last seen each other (the best part of fourteen years ago) and suggested that we meet up. Within a few minutes I received the following message:
Would absolutely love it if you came up to see me! How long has it been? Feels like forever. Whatever day you fancy just let me know and I’ll book the day off work and cancel my spin class (I go most days after work). Give my love to your Missus and your very, very, very cute kids! Sam x
A short flurry of emails later we’d arranged a date.
It was just after eleven a.m. on the last Wednesday in January when I found myself standing in front of the departure board at Leeds railway station scanning the hundreds of faces milling around on the concourse. There were girls of every sort but not one matched the face that I had pictured in my head. Suddenly there she was: the long auburn air was now bobbed, the silver nose stud gone and her skinny frame, though fuller, was more healthy looking (this version of Sam didn’t look for a moment as though it survived on a diet of Silk Cut and microwave pizza rolls). The only thing that remained unchanged were the clothes (less obviously studenty but still recognisably Sam’s style), her smiling eyes and the filthy big grin. For a moment I was speechless because it really was the weirdest sensation to see someone whom you’d once seen practically every day for a year after a fourteen-year gap. I was expecting to see the Sam that I’d known then and though the person in front of me was vaguely like her, the resemblance was more that of an older, wiser sibling. What I looked like to her I had no idea but there was considerably more of me now than there had been back then. As for the way I was dressed (army jacket, jeans, trainers) I guessed I looked grown up but not exactly like
a grown-up
.
As we walked along the street towards Leeds’s Corn Exchange for a coffee I commented on how the city had changed. As a student in Manchester I used to come here all the time for gigs or to see friends at the university and knew it quite well but the huge swathes of glass and steel were unfamiliar. Always keen to adopt a clumsy metaphor, I wondered whether Sam might see me in the same way.
We wandered around various shops selling everything from Goth clubwear to comics before heading down to the café on the lower ground floor. As we waited for our drinks Sam filled in the gaps of how she had left Birmingham to go back to Yorkshire and how she ended up in IT support. She told me all about her house in a little village to the west of Leeds, how she’d given up smoking and got into Pilates. She told me she’d been seeing a guy for a while but wasn’t sure where it was going and that she might like to have kids one day if both the guy and the timing were right. Midway through an anecdote about a recent gig she paused as though she’d remembered something important, picked up her bag from the floor, and pulled out a large grey folder.
‘Have a look at this.’
I opened the folder and a smile spread across my face. Inside were the letters that I’d sent to her when I’d first moved to London the summer after we became friends. The letters were filled with nonsense that at the time I thought was funny: drawings of stick men, detailed descriptions of things I’d eaten for breakfast and information leaflets for local swimming baths. At the bottom was something that really took me back: a homemade birthday card (from photocopied pictures from the Jamie Hewlett comic,
Tank Girl
) that I’d sent to Sam on her twentieth birthday.
Sam grinned. ‘That is still one of the nicest cards I’ve ever had.’
‘Cheers,’ I said examining my handcrafted effort. ‘It took me forever to make but I remember really enjoying it. I miss doing stuff like that – making cards and mix-tapes and writing friends long letters – I miss doing things for no other reason than because they’re fun.’
There was a bit of a silence and I wondered whether Sam had picked up on what I was trying to say: that as well as missing making stupid birthday cards I missed having a mate as good as her, but then the waitress arrived and we got distracted.
‘I’m definitely going to come and see you again, you know.’
‘Why? Are you thinking of leaving already?’
‘No,’ I laughed, ‘it’s just . . . it’s just . . . I dunno.’
‘It’s all right, I know what you mean. I was thinking the same thing: it seems pointless making so many good mates when you’re younger just to let them all go without putting up a fight.’
‘Exactly,’ I replied. ‘What I’m trying to say is let’s not leave it another fourteen years before we do this again.’
On the 18.10 back to Birmingham New Street, squeezed in next to a plump business man with a bright red face and opposite a pair of students sharing iPod headphones, I reflected not only on the day but on the whole of this last month. From that momentous change of heart on New Year’s Eve I’d ticked off dozens of items from the To-Do List and moreover stuck to the plan for a whole month. Maybe this To-Do List wasn’t going to end up like every other here-today-gone-tomorrow whim of mine. Maybe this really was different.
Excerpt from Mike’s To-Do-List Diary (Part 2)
Thursday 1 February
1.21 p.m.
I am searching for my old debit card for my First Direct bank account in order to find their number so that I can call them and tick off Item 320: ‘Close First Direct account that you haven’t used in about six years’. I’d opened the account because at the time they were offering customers £20 to do so. Sensing a bargain I put £50 in there, waited until they put in the £20 then planned to withdraw the lot and close the account. Obviously me being me, I didn’t get round to closing it but then the strain of having two different PIN numbers to remember took its toll and after about six months I stopped using it altogether.
1.35 p.m.
I have found the card. It was in the kitchen drawer by the back door.
1.38 p.m.
I’m on the computer Googling the bank’s phone number which has changed from the one on the back of the card.
1.42 p.m.
I am on the phone with First Direct:
FD: Hi, how can I help you?
Me: I’d like to close my account and get my money back please.
FD: Of course. Could you give me the details?
Me: Okay [I then proceed to give her the details].
FD [after a pause]: Oh, you haven’t used it in a while.
Me: Er . . . no.
FD: I see. Well it’s been marked as a dormant account so I’ll have to put you on to my line manager.
FD line manager: Hi, how can I help you?
Me: I’d like my money back please.
FD: Right. [Long pause]. There’s £3.72 in there. [Laughs] Will a cheque do?
Me: That would be lovely.
Friday 2 February
2.28 p.m.
Item 398 on the To-Do List is: ‘Buy new pants because walking around acting like you haven’t got a care in the world when your underwear is over a decade old is just plain wrong!’ Therefore I am on my way to Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre in search of pants. I can’t quite understand how this old pants situation came about given that when it comes to outerwear I’ve always been pretty much on the money. Perhaps the thing is, given that in any one day a man might have 5,000 or so different thoughts, very few of them tend to be about pants. Claire on the other hand is always buying new pants. Rarely does a week pass without a telltale Marks and Spencer carrier bag appearing in the house. The last time I bravely asked why she bought so many pants when there are only seven days in the week and she’s only got one bottom. She didn’t reply. She just narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips and carried on unpacking her pants.
2.45 p.m.
I am in Selfridges looking at Calvin Klein underwear. They want the best part of fifteen quid for a single pair! I do the maths in my head and work out that if I want a pair for each day and an extra pair for good luck it will cost me £120. I don’t want to spend £120 on pants and so I head to M&S.
3.03 p.m.
M&S do okay pants. In fact the ones I’ve got on now are the ones that I wore on my wedding day just over ten years ago. Apart from various bits of fraying they are still going strong. I examine the various designs: boxers, briefs, trunks, hipsters and slips. I immediately discount slips on account of them being called ‘slips’ and briefs too on account of them being plain old nasty. Having always been a fan of ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’, I ruled out boxers and was left with trunks and hipsters (which pretty much looked like trunks). Faced with the further options of ‘climate control’ cotton or ‘RealCool Cotton’ (Did I really need the ability to manage the temperature in my pants or could I get away with them just being constantly cool?) I thought about calling Claire and asking her to try to get a look at Derek’s smalls somehow but, unsure of how this could be safely accomplished, I decided against it and bought three sets of each.