When I moved to Leeds in May 2000, I made a friend through work. Actually, I made a number of friends through work - I made more friends in that the six months in that job than I did in the rest of my (five and a half) years at the university combined - but for the sake of this post, I’m thinking about one person in particular.

We weren’t bestest-best buds or anything but we had a laugh together. He used to hang out in my office quite a bit during the day, we’d sometimes have lunch together in the department’s senior common room and we went to the pub together from time to time on various department-related outings or celebrations. After I left, we continued to meet up every couple of months at pubs or department parties and the like until, eventually, other stuff got in the way and we drifted apart.

About three years later, I was walking through the university at the end of the day, heading the back way into town to avoid the crowds, when I saw someone that looked like this person coming the other way up the cliff of steps. Given a few years had passed and the turnover of people through the uni is so vast, I wasn’t sure if it was him so didn’t say anything to be on the safe side. Then I saw him again on another two occasions in quick succession - same place, same time - and I realised it definitely was my old friend — but by then I thought it would be weird to say hello or acknowledge him because I’d essentially just ignored him the first two times. Of course, since we then passed each other just about every night for months, it was as equally awkward continuing to not acknowledge each other.
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At hideously-early o’clock (8.55) yesterday morning, a knock on the door awoke me from my slumber. Not expecting delivery of anything or anyone, I couldn’t be bothered getting up to answer since it was likely to be a spammer (we get lots of annoying salespeople around here). But, like with the cats I so utterly adore, curiosity got the better of me eventually. By that time though, there was a “we missed you” Royal Mail card on the doormat and the postman was halfway down the street and I had to chase after him barefoot and in my pyjamas. That was fun.

Anyway, the registered letter of horrid-awakening-and-cold-feet turned out to be my Manhattans Reunion tickets: the pieces of card which will whisk Andrew and me ten years back in time. I am still intrigued but nervous about this little event but on the whole looking forward to it.

For anyone that cares (and I know a number of people have come this blog recently through searching “manhattans reunion” or the like, so they might even if no one else does), that photo-booth picture up there is what I looked like when I frequented the ‘hattans all those years ago (mid-1995 to end-of-1997). Looking at it from this angle, I’m the one of the left; my right hand man, of course, being Andrew. Actually, that isn’t really what we looked like at Manhattans: that’s what we looked like at about 3am on a Monday morning at the Hartshead Moor services on the way back from V97 in Leeds after 48+ hours without sleep. We still went to Manhattans that night.

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