Who's The Daddy: Catching up with my group of friends for life
Men are very simple creatures. We’re basically dogs with a National Insurance number. It really doesn’t take much to keep us happy. The love of a good woman, a job that has at least some meaning to it and enough friends (a maximum of four) to carry your coffin.
Last week yours truly had the pleasure of spending 24 hours in the company of friends I met at college in 1988 – nope, that’s not a typo. And after all these years of being best men at each other’s weddings, the birth of children, the death of parents, we still haven’t been able to shake each other off.
We meet up nowhere near as often as we used to or should, sometimes only once a year now, around an event – usually football or a gig. This time, the venue was a room above a pub in Sheffield to see four young hopefuls from Stockport called The Rolling People. They may sound like a track from The Verve’s Urban Hymns but to these ancient ears (protected by ear defenders at gigs these days after an unfortunate incident last September when I thought I’d permanently deafened myself watching a noisy rock band) they have the swagger of early Oasis with the melodic lilt of The La’s.
Anyway, this isn’t the NME, you haven’t tuned in to read a middle-aged man’s review of a gig where the band are young enough to be the writer’s grandchildren. So let’s cut to the chase.
Even after too long apart, the moment the four of us met in the hotel lobby was life-affirming. It was like I’d nipped off to the bar to get a round of drinks in at Neighbourhood Weekender in Warrington one Saturday night last Mayand we’d carried on our conversation where we left off. Back in the day (there, I’ve said it) all the talk revolved around football, bands and whatever low-stakes nonsense 18-year-old lads think matters. These days it’s work and retirement planning, grown and flown kids, ISAs, health, fitness and diet – oh, and football – mainly about all the weird and wonderful places we’ve been to watch Hannover 96 play all over Germany when one of the lads worked there.
It’s amazing (and terrifying) to think that not so long ago we were the future, now the majority of our children are older than we were when first met.
One of the reasons we make a point of doing it is because one day we’ll be too old and frail to travel, too knackered to stand for a couple of hours at a gig and a sharp frost at a football match might be enough to see us all off.
About 20 years ago we used to joke that we should all move in together to relive our carefree student days – our partners might have had something to say about it at the time, mainly because they needed all the help with childcare they could get. Now they’d probably hire a Transit and drive us all to the new over-55s residential development on the hallowed ground where our halls of residence once stood.
Anyway, the bottom line is this – spending 24 hours in the company of friends you’ve known for nearly 40 years does you a lot of good. Concrete plans have already been made for next summer’s World Cup. On TV, obviously. We’re not made of money.
To read more Who’s The Daddy click here