Chilling memories

One of the tasks I undertake for the monthly journal of a professional institute is to sub a list of people who have been members of the organisation for 20, 30, 40 and 50 years or more. Those who have been a member for 20 years joined in 2000. This can't be right, because surely the Seventies are only 30 years away.

The Seventies are on my mind at the moment because I've been invited to a school reunion, which has thrown up all sorts of questions, not least whether or not to take Mr T with me. He won't know many people and he didn't know me when I was at school, so, as one of my friends has put it, it's really none of his business. Do I want him chatting with exes and people I had petty squabbles with?

I've kept in touch with a handful of people I went to school with, but while I have a passing interesting in some of the others and occasionally hear news of them, I wonder if there's a reason we're not in regular contact. I mean, teenage girls: they be bitches!

And we are being 'strongly encouraged' to wear Seventies clothing. Oh heck.

I've also been delving back even further, to my time at primary school. I have a piece in the current issue of Best of British about swiming lessons at my home town's outdoor lido, when it was so cold I actually shivered myself to the floor of the changing cubicle. Different times!