Face friends from the past end.

Social networking sites have been alive and kicking for some time now.  For the most part the novelty has worn off just a smidgeon (the likes pokes and garish/obscene virals) and they seem to have settled into a 'warm tool' (best way I can currently describe them).  Current and recent friends and colleagues populate these sites (admittedly facebook for the main) and have taken over the role of an email account with the added bonus of checking up what your cohorts have been up to of late.  The odd cheeky game of scrabble and poker with random deep south Americans and you've got yourself a new 'pastime/wastetime'.

Of late however I've been virtually touched up by members of my past the frontal lobe of my brain end had forgotten all about.  My school years have returned in pixelated form to the point I'm not sure where logging begins and memory ends.  First it was one or two faces from my comprehensive years, a simple 'hi, remember me' line or two.  Then the doors are opened for the formative years in junior school (anything up to age 11 I guess).  The strange thing is, I can barely remember three quarters of the people I went to school with: names and faces have been so far mashed into the back of my cheese box that I'm totally surprised at the storage quality of our brain servers.  

You see, as soon as a name or face appears several inches from my face I find myself back twenty odd years back in time – this  has happened with increasing regularity of the past few weeks.  Good friends, seemingly banished forever as far as my memory goes have suddenly returned (of course, there might have been reasons for forgetting some people, but time papers over many cracks).

And then the old 35mm photo's, processed at boots many years ago are slowly being digitised (and look far more evocative than the bulk of digital camera's in everyone's hands).  

It's been a bit of a revelation during the past couple of weeks.  I'd previously told myself I wouldn't really enter my past in such a manner – it should be perfectly happy where it lay.  But I'm slowly coming round to revisiting this period.  I moved away from my home town around eighteen years ago, so most of thee people I haven't seen for years.  However I really don't think it's infeasible for me to consider, god help me, a reunion....