APRIL 2004


Pat

Mary

Sheila

Ros

The four friends lost touch with each other over the years. Career changes, relocation and family commitments contributed to this gradual loss of contact. However, Sheila and Ros remained good friends, despite the fact they lived in different countries. Mary and Sheila maintained a distant contact, catching up with news at Christmas.

In 2002 I (Pat) heard about the website, Friends Reunited. I registered and realised with great excitement that Sheila was also registered.

http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk

Without further ado I contacted her by email. To receive a response from her, and to hear that she was still in touch with Mary and Ros was incredible. Remarkably, it transpired that both Mary and I had unsuccessfully tried to locate each other, retracing our last known addresses, but all the time we only lived about 5 miles from each other!

Mary and I initially met up for lunch at a local restaurant and both admitted that although our paths may have crossed locally, we would have not recognised each other. The trials of middle age!

Spurred on now by our recent discovery, we arranged to meet up with Sheila, and another schoolfriend, Barbara, in Guildford

Although Mary and I have met up on a couple of occasions since, we rather sadly have acknowledged that apart from reminiscing about schooldays and our youth, we do not have a lot of common interests.
However, the interest and excitement has been rekindled with the preparation of this website. The timing was opportune to arrange a reunion as Ros was due to visit her family in England in April.

We all met up once again with trepidation and excitement at Olivo in Guildford.

What should we wear?
What should we talk about?
Would we act like strangers?

These were just a few of the thoughts running through our minds. We need not have worried – we spent the next 3 hours pouring over photos of schooldays and our respective families. We were finally ‘politely’ asked to leave the restaurant as they wished to shut!

Was the reunion a success? Mary sums it up well

“35 years. I cannot tell you all the joys and happinesses of these years, but it was pure pleasure when we met for lunch. So many memories awakened, people and events remembered and names put to faces. I was 18 again, and delighted to find that grown women can still giggle!"

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