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!
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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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