I’ve always been a fan of the whole Friends Reunited thing, so you can imagine the excitement round blogjam towers this evening as I discovered a New Zealand derivative, www.oldfriends.co.nz. It seems to be a pretty successful version of the UK original (much more so than that site’s own Find a Kiwi service) and, rather delightfully, it hosts a couple of class photos that feature yours truly in my pre-teen days. The first thing I noticed is that these are pictures taken during an era when it was fashionable for boys to sport their hair long, and I wore mine short. Today men are more likely to wear their hair cropped, of course, whereas mine is… you get the picture – I’ve obviously always been a contrary bastard.
Also present in both pictures is my very first crush (I won’t reveal her name on the off-chance she stumbles across this site one day), and a boy I knew called Patrick Moore. I only mention this because another of my friends was called David Niven, which used to create all sorts of hilarity round the Lewry household. Where are you going tonight, Fraser? Oh, I’m off round David Niven’s place, then heading over to Patrick Moore’s to watch the Gary Glitter special.
He was the only person I knew with colour television. But no telescope.