These guys

In 1993, the week after Hannah was born, I started a new contract at Barclays Bank in Knutsford. The project was part populated by Arthur Andersen, including a cohort of recent graduates. Two of them sat on a table with me and another chap. One was called Simon and the other was a Scottish young lady called Angela.

It's not my place to tell other people's stories but Angela grew up in a rough part of Glasgow, yet pulled herself up by her own bootstraps to get to Strathclyde, where she received a first class degree in business studies. She was funny, smart, hard-working and hated programming. Which was a shame because that was the role Andersens had given her. 

Over the eighteen months we worked together, we became firm friends and all during this period she was seeing another chap who worked at Andersens called Keith. I never met him - he was on a project in Harrogate - and in the end they went off travelling around the world together. Later they would marry and, before that, Ange became Godmother to my fourth daughter, Milly.

By 2002, I was working on a contract in London and during this period - to Ange's mild irritation - Keith and I became good friends. When Dan was born in 2002, I asked Dan to be his Godfather and I later became Godfather to one of his daughters.

This weekend is Keith's 50th birthday party and so Dan and I went down join in the celebrations. This involved an earlyish start, taking the train from Oxenholme to London, and then across town to my folks'. My brother, Wol, met up with us, joining our train at Wimbledon and we all disembarked at New Malden. 

New Malden is where I grew up apart from the years when I lived in Hong Kong. Indeed, the platform at the station is where my mum and dad decided to go and live in Asia. So as we walked along the high street, Wol and I talked Dan through the catalogue of shops that used to be there: the chip shop, Rock 'n' Roe; Cannings; and so on. We carried on to Burlington Road, where my grandparents lived. 

In the photo, we are at the top of the road, next to the old Police Station, now a Wetherspoons, which had the aircraft siren on the roof. Also pictured is the 131 bus that played such a large part in our schooldays. My mum picked us up from the church that we attended for many years and took us back to Worcester Park for a barbecue with my dad.

In the evening, Dan and I travelled over to Hampton for Keith's birthday party. I saw my Goddaughter briefly - she was keen to avoid The Adults - and then we spent the evening in the garden. I indulged in one or two of Keith's insane cocktails and reacquainted myself with some of Keith's friends that I've met over the years and a couple whom I only met this evening. (Full credit to Dan for making conversation and engaging with a load of older people he'd never met before!)

****
-12.6 kgs
0 words
Reading: David McCourt's 'Total Rethink'