A Time and Place for us...

28 July 2000

Nostalgia this morning, for some reason. Or possibly just experiment. You see, in my daily life I rarely meet anyone I've known for any length of time. (Ten years absolute max, and that much only rarely.) This has its advantages - immediacy - currency, and so on - but just occasionally, now and again, one does think back to significant others from another time, another place. And today's time was 1968, and the place London, when I was just graduating from Imperial College and about to make my faltering start in the world. I did a websearch.

The first one didn't work at all. The man I chose was a former fellow student with a distinctive name. A few results, but none clickable, and none really I would attribute to him - a young man so fascinated by both electronics and maths I expected him to be a captain of industry by now.

The next search - another long-lost student friend - was a huge success. He's now an associate professor (naked or otherwise) in Australia, and there were even some pictures of him at a faculty "do". He had a plastic cup in his hand. The years and the poor quality picture rendered him totally unrecognisable, but there was no doubt about it. Hmmmm. Is oneself now unrecognisable also? Interesting thought.

So, what to do? An email would be so easy. Hi Ted (let's say) how ya doin mate. How's advanced modelling of this that and the other? What's it like being at the pinnacle of middle-class society? Has it worked out as you thought? Or maybe too much as you thought? Great to see your pic, btw, sorry about the hair, and you really should ditch the beard. Clean-cut was always your thing, you know.

I thank you for the great friendship during those dreadful (for me) years, which at times was one of the few things which kept me alive. God bless you and your wife, also my friend at that time.

Well - not really too surprised by Ted's career success, I then moved onto another huge influence from that year - my first (and only) real love. (Oh yes - this was not an idle hour. It's not every day you realise the awesome power - awesome - of this new gismo, the www.) Where would he be? Although intensely Scottish (yawn), he was nevertheless travelled and cosmopolitan. Would he even be alive? Many of us of this gay generation are not, you know.

This man, let's call him Bob, (all we seem to need now is Alice, but there have been no Alices in my life), is coincidentally blessed with a distinctive name also. So it really didn't take more than five minutes to get him tracked down to some pages about Scottish History. (You must forgive me for not identifying these men more closely, but they deserve privacy. Or at least, not to be discovered via this tatty rag.)

Here I felt on slightly safer ground, and tentatively, so gently, I popped a tiny message on his Guestbook. "Is that u?" was all it said. That will suffice. If it's him then he will understand.

This is exciting stuff!! Already huge lists are forming in my mind. Lists of those I've known and loved and laughed with a little - all sitting at their computers, just a couple of clicks away from mine, via the power of the Search Engines - the new Holy Grail.

And if and when I feel some social doubt, some feeling that maybe I too could have been an associate professor, if not so burdened with developmental problems as to render me almost unable to live - if and when those thoughts wriggle in, then I'll just have to cling to the late great Quentin...

"You must strive to BE more than you DO."

Coudn't have put it better myself, old guy. But then who ever could?

PS You might think it a bit odd, three years into a diary, suddenly plucking key figures as if from nowhere. But that's not totally true! You can read about Bob here. And Bob and Ted here. You see, there are little clues all the way through!

NEXT