A Blast from the Past

My two favourite things from Harry Potter that I wish were real are Quidditch - well, obviously, who wouldn't want to fly around on broomsticks wielding rounders bats? - and Professor Dumbledore's Pensieve. In case you're not as Harry Potter-ed up as we are in this house, the Pensieve is the thing that looks like a font full of mercury and Professor D pulls memories out of his head with his wand (think spun sugar or candyfloss) and puts them in so he can return to each memory and relive it.

Now I realise that this would be a mixed blessing. Yes, you can relive the joyous moments again and again (but with repetition would they lose some of their gloss?) but I would certainly be tempted to go back to some of the less warm and wonderful and probably most embarrassing/humiliating bits too. And a goodly number of the latter happened in my mid-teens.

I moved to Yorkshire in my very early twenties and so have left the evidence - or rather, the witnesses - of the latter long behind me. But last night was almost like a Pensieve moment - a blast from the past - as they would say on Radio 1 in the nineteen seventies.

My beloved and I attended a significant birthday party of a friend from all those years ago when Coventry (yes, really!) was the most happening place in my universe. This friend also lives up here and our paths have crossed occasionally over the years so when he invited us to a party at which a goodly number of these friends from my misspent youth were likely to be heading north (and from various other directions) it had to be done.

Of course, with the invitation being months ahead of the party it didn't start to stare me in the face until the few days running up to it. And then, in the brief lulls between all the jubilee-ing going on in our lovely village over the weekend, I had contemplated some of the times when we had all last been together. Happy, sad, embarrassing and ungainly - definitely - but worth remembering. Friends, one in particular, no longer with us and other friends who have drifted away to be distant memories only.

Fast forward to getting ready and a proper wardrobe crisis almost on a par with those of thirty-something years ago. We had also been invited en famille to a party in the village last night so we arranged to start and finish there, leaving children 3 and 4 with their gang of friends whilst we headed to a pub the other side of Harrogate. On the way there in the car, I worried... would I recognise any of them? would they remember the embarrassing, awful moments that haunted my youth and remind me of them? would I be that ungainly, bashful girl, hoping to control my blushes and not say or do the wrong thing? My beloved, who was remarkably stoic about the whole thing with the likelihood of only knowing one other couple, assured me I would survive.

And as he had correctly predicted, as soon as we got inside the pub, there was a shout of 'Stiggins!' which was my nickname from all those years ago (my oldest friend, Alps, still calls me Stigs) and I was enveloped in hugs and memories and affection from all those years ago and, keeping my beloved in sight out of the corner of my eye, I chatted to some of the characters who joyfully populated my teens and remembered and relived some great moments. My beloved left me to it, uncharacteristically drinking water (whilst I most definitely didn't) and chatted with good friends who were clearly amused by my general jumping up and down, singing songs never made famous by a band once called Lavatory and subsequently - I suspect at the insistence of someone's parents - renamed Eric and remembered things that I haven't thought about in years. And gawky, unsure teenager I may have been in those days but we did have some good times.

So big thanks to Dave and Pam for inviting us, my beloved for being my wingman (in the manner of Top Gun) and to Chris Nought (because he has no middle name) Bailey, Patti, Mick (whose children will by now have congratulated him on refusing to go out with a woman who is definitely not the full shilling), Marcus (no, I can't remember you driving me home in 1972 and I am still wondering what happened...), Ali and lovely Bill Allen. Unforgettable...