I join you this month, having hot-footed it here from deepest, darkest Memory Lane. An old friend contacted me out of the blue a little while ago and asked whether I fancied getting together for a catch-up. Having not seen the chap in question for what must have been at least thirty years, I was intrigued, to say the least. After all, you can’t help but wonder what’s happened to one’s friends of yesteryear. What journey did they embark upon in life, and what exactly are they doing now? And, of course, have the years been as kind to them as they have (or haven’t) been to you?

As it turned out, this particular trip turned out to be something of a double whammy. Not only did I get to catch up with the old friend in question, but he also happened to live close to my old stomping ground; the place I used to live when I was still in short trousers. It was somewhere I hadn’t been to in probably a good 25 years, so I couldn’t resist getting to our appointment a little early so I could mooch around the streets to see what had changed.

And I have to say it was a slightly unsettling experience. Not surprisingly, quite a lot had changed over the past quarter century. There was a new housing estate here and some new shops there. But equally, some memorable landmarks still remained. Even the old newsagents where I’d spent a small fortune in pocket money during the seventies was still intact, even if it was under different ownership. Those were the days when Mars Bars cost about 3p and were about twice the size of the versions on sale today (either that or my hands have grown alarmingly since puberty). I was almost tempted to stick my head around the door, but for some reason, I wanted to remember it as it had been rather than how it was now. Plus, I might have been tempted to have a nostalgic hit on the pick and mix, which could have been a very slippery slope.

Just along from the newsagents was the road I used to take to school. As I walked along it, I calculated that I was retracing a journey I’d probably made a thousand times in my youth. For the most part, the scenery was barely recognisable. But occasionally, I’d receive a jolting flashback as I recognised a particular view from all those years ago. I say jolting because I didn’t just remember the scenery; it also brought back a flood of other memories. And like many nostalgic things, it delivered a half-smile of recognition along with a stab of melancholy. People and incidents from the past leapt vividly to mind for the first time in decades, yet of course only I could see them. It was both surprising and a little surreal.