You've Got Everything Now

I can't help feeling that "Friends Reunited" is something of an oxymoron. For the most part, if you actually had "friends" at school, chances are you are united with them already, and the few that you might want to meet up with for one reason or another are generally not sad enough to play around on a website in some sort of misguided nostalgia-induced hazed. Generally I find that school reunions, and the likes of Friends Reunited, serve only as a reminder as to why you chose not to keep in contact with certain people in the first place.

As I said, it's fairly useless. The majority of people who have screwed up don't admit it on Friends Reunited, those who have done anything interesting are too busy being interesting to go on the website, and the rest - like, for example, university welfare advisers - are not going to set the world on fire with their personal profiles. Of the three schools I went to, as far as my primary school is concerned I would (as Peter Kay remarked) be better off watching Crimewatch to find out what became of my contemporaries; of my sixth form, the revelation that most of my friends are still travelling the world on Daddy's credit card is not actually all that much of a revelation; and I don't give a rat's arse about the people in between.

Its only redeeming feature, really, is the opportunities it presents to gloat at people who treated you like something on the bottom of their shoe at secondary school who are now, surprise, surprise, doing fairly ordinary things, just like everyone else. The Smiths song "You've Got Everything Now" spring to mind, with said acquaintances as the lamenting Morrissey. Take, for example, the folowing illuminating profile of the Cambridge graduate who got the Prix D'Exellence in Year 9 (which means the Swots Prize, which they invariably gave to the smarmiest students rather than the smartest) - someone who once told me my stupidity "amuses me so much!" and used to mimic some of my pronunciations. Said student is now a teacher in Bedford: "Rediscovering life as a singleton and trying not to bump into the sixth form in the local pubs. Intending to come to London more often... Will be lodging with a great mate next year so team marking with wine can become a new pastime! "

Wild.

This is, admittedly, one of the more adventurous examples: most have gone back to Guernsey and are now working in banks or insurance, which makes my job feel positively energising. More amusing, though, is the Lancashire contemporary who claims to be "an acter in America" (sic). I have it on good authority he is actually in prison for armed robbery.

Of my friends from school, one is an archaeologist, another teaching.lay ministering in Southampton, a third in stage management, and the fourth a novelist. None is on Friends Reunited. There are only two people - Kizzie and Era - who I have genuinely lost contact with and would love to see again. As predicated, they are not on Friends Reunited.

My running totals are edging towards my targets slowly but surely. Have now put a soppy photo up on the second website in the hope this will encourage people to donate. Worked out that running round the entire edge of Regents Park is almost exactly 5K. It's just that when you put it like that, it feels like a heck of a long way.