Friends Reunited

I had a telephone call from a client the other day, nothing new there you could say, this one is a male, about my age, divorced, lives on his own apart from the school holidays when his two boys join him, and runs a caravan park. Being a similar age we have got on from day one, I remember he phoned two days after my brother died, he had tried the day I was off our conversation went like this:

"Where were you yesterday, playing golf no doubt you lazy bugger."
"My brother died so I took the day off."
"Fuck. Oh shit. Me and my big mouth."

He insists that if her ever has to pay tax it should come out of my wages as obviously I'm not doing my job properly looking after him. Anyway, about eighteen months ago he had a stroke. It was a complete shock for somebody who only two years previously had given up a 'London lifestyle' ,as he put it, for life down in Dorset. What the stroke did to him physically is difficult to judge when you meet him, he still looks, talks, walks in exactly the same way as he did before. Mentally though he has had quite a transformation, gone are the days of saving for tomorrow, he has taken his two boys on a cruise of the Caribbean for Christmas, bought himself a long overdue new car and has employed an agency to answer the phone for the site.

Anyway his call was the usual business chat for a couple of minutes and then he suddenly said, "I've met a woman." No surprise there to be honest, then he added, "I haven't seen her for about twenty years since I left Scotland, we went to school together, I'm completely besotted, what should I do?"

There was a long pause at that point.
"I can't tell you what to do."
"Not about my love life stupid, should I get a pre-nup?"
"Woah there, back-up. You haven't seen her for twenty years. She could be a bunny boiler."
"Nah, she's fine, I just don't want her getting her hands on my assets."
"Oh that's very trustworthy at the start of a relationship."

It made me think about the whole Friends Reunited business and how it's great if it does bring long lost friends, colleagues, ex-lovers etc together. I joined about three years to try and find a long lost cousin, I did - she too had given up the London lifestyle and moved to Crete with her famous chef husband. I was only a member of Friends Reunited for a short while but I managed to acquire a cyber-stalker. Within a day of signing-up I was contacted by a female who had been two years ahead of me at school. When I was at school she was referred to as one of the 'untouchables' - I'm sure every school has them, the good looking people for whom nobody will ever be good enough, a bit like that film with Alicia Silverstone which was based on a famous books whose name I can't remember either - anyway in her e-mails it was clear that she mistook me for one of my friends. She referred to trips I'd never been on, people I'd never hung out with - it was all rather sad, her stalking ended when I refused to acknowledge an invitation for a get together.

But good luck to my client, if he finds someone who he can share his life with, why not?