Desperately Seeking Sarah

5 Things About Long Lost People

Linda
I was in East Sussex over the weekend seeing various family members who I otherwise won’t get the chance to see over Xmas. Ma, Pa, aunt Bea & husband Neil, cousin Jacob and girlfriend Phil. Lovely to see them all and we all met up with a very old friend of my parents’, Linda.

She recently had some personal tragedy, and my parents, particularly my dad have been very supportive of her, which is how the friendship has become rekindled.

It turns out I haven’t seen Linda for 24 years and the last time we met I was a cute, blonde thing with chubby cheeks and fat thighs (hey, not everything changes!). She was lovely and bought us all lunch at her local pub and opened champagne for no particular reason. Which is always my favourite reason for drinking champagne.

Mattyo
Mattyo is one of my oldest friends. He and I went to secondary school together and, I think, went out for about half an hour once at a school disco when we were about 12 years old (I hid in the toilets for the whole time because I was scared). Somehow, we’ve just kept in touch, while I’ve moved to London and he’s been to various universities, studied in Spain, finally got that first he deserves and got a proper job. We communicate every couple of months and see each other barely once a year, but I somehow know we’ll never lose touch entirely. He emailed me last week and we’re going to meet up over Christmas. Hooray!

Sarah
Two years ago, my very good friend from school, Sarah, sent me a sweet Christmas card with her phone number in it saying how much she’d like to hear from me. I utterly failed to call her. I don’t know why, but every time I looked at the card stuck to the fridge I thought, “I must do that soon” until it just seemed far too late. This year I have finally overcome my guilt and embarrassment and yesterday I wrote her a short card apologising and suggesting I go and see her while I’m back in the country over Xmas. She was always a bit mad, very funny and the same height as me at the age of 13, which meant we could scare all the boys at school.

Ross
Ross is my oldest friend. Or he would be if we were still in touch. He and I went to playschool together and became good friends again as teenagers. We used to do things like drink cider on Eastbourne beach at 3am, nick flashing bollards then take them up to his room, turn all the lights off and listen to Soundgarden really loudly. Pretty cool, no? I’m sure his mum thought so, anyway.

We kept in contact for a few years, but sadly for the last five years or so we’ve completely dropped contact. I’m quite sad about this, but so far old email addresses and Friends Reunited have proved fruitless, so I may just have to accept it.

My sister
I haven’t spoken to her for, like, two whole days! Except for Instant Messenger, of course. Tsk.