Getting Unnecessarily Sentimental

I spent the weekend at the wedding of an old friend, back in my teenage home town of Worthing (or, if you've read Of the City of the Saved..., Kempes District). At some point I may try and analyse the love-hate relationship I have with the place, but I suspect it may end up being entirely banal and precisely what you'd get from anyone who'd long since moved from a provincial town to a reasonably major city.

The important thing about this weekend was the wedding, and its guests. The wedding itself was lovely, a short and simple ceremony followed by a decent reception. Veggie food was sparse, but we managed to persuade the catering staff to bring us the leftovers from other tables and we ended up doing rather well. The speeches were numerous, but crucially short (the sweepstake winner had plumped for 33 minutes), and the perennial post-reception disco was splendid.

Among those in attendance -- the bride included -- were about three-quarters of the group I bonded with as a teenager, who have remained my closest friends in the time since, including eight years at university (during which I made a whole lot of very excellent new friends), my marriage to B. and our move to Bristol. Most of these guys I hardly ever see these days, but I've known them half my life -- longer in some cases -- and I love them (including the couple of privileged adoptees the group has acquired over the years) more than anyone else on Earth except for B.

(Oh, and my family I suppose. Hi, Dad.)

It's when I'm with these friends that I'm always inspired to write -- a few books late, admittedly -- that Great Autobiographical First Novel with which a marvellous new talent always explodes onto the literary scene, to be greeted with critical acclaim, fame and surprisingly adequate amounts of money.

It would be an epic tale of childhood friendship in the face of adult life, of bonds between people who were once strangers becoming strong enough to persist in the face of everything the world can throw at them. It would be a saga of innocence and experience, of huge parties and remarkable feats of drunkenness, of Wham, Queen, Abba and Enya, of utterly disastrous holidays, of flirtation, sexual awakening and teenage heartbreak, of mature relationships and messy endings, of courtships and separations, of marriage and divorce, of fidelity and lust, of pregnancy, birth and parenthood, of moving apart and staying together, of disability, accident and bereavement, of art and science, of finance and third-world aid, of conversion and loss of faith, of christianity and humanism, of fundamentalism, liberalism and apathy, of angst and comfort, of misery and elation, of mistrust and loyalty, of astounding naiveté and hard-won cynicism, of optimism and disappointment, of triumph and loss, and of abiding love. It would be a vast, bible-thick tome which would contain enough material for a dozen TV miniseries and, basically, set me up for life.

Unfortunately it would also be The One Where None Of Phil's Friends Ever Speak To Him Again, so it'll probably never happen. Still, it sounds pretty good on paper, doesn't it?