Today’s reminiscence harkens back to my immediate post-university years that I find my current mentality drifting back to ever more frequently under these times of lockdown and quarantine. I’ll confess in advance I’m not sharing this particular encounter out of any sense of lingering guilt, shame or necessity, but instead simply because I’ve enjoyed sharing with this community and, to not put too fine a point on it, it helps fill a portion of an otherwise relatively uneventful day!

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I was 22 and in my first year of freedom from university. Precisely at the stage wherein the more casual of friends you’ve spent the previous three years with start drifting away, and you focus on the ‘core group’ of people you want to keep in your life. It’s also the year when the incredibly over-eager couples who somehow managed to remain together over those three years inexplicably all decide to get married.

I already attended two weddings that year. By the time the third and final wedding came around it was already widely known that the first was already close to ending. I was already suitably jaded and happy to attend simply out of loyalty to a friend I’d probably not see again until someone suggested a reunion in twenty years time, and for the food and opportunity to consume vast amounts of alcohol. Read more »