Who's The Daddy: Remembering the fun that was 30 years ago

By The Newsroom
Published 31st Aug 2022, 08:45 BST
Updated 1st Sep 2022, 10:06 BST
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Stress dreams. We’ve all had them. And they usually involve inexplicably turning up for work naked, all your teeth falling out, sitting an exam on a subject you know nothing about and haven’t revised for, or walking into a reunion party where you haven’t seen any of the guests for the last 30 years.

When tickets went on sale last summer for our college’s reunion, they sold out in a few hours. Course they did, who wouldn’t want to party like it’s 1989 one last time?

Trouble is, most of us hadn’t seen each other since Tim Berners-Lee came up with the World Wide Web. So walking through the doors into the unknown last Saturday night is the closest we’d get to feeling the pressure of taking the deciding penalty in the shoot-out at the World Cup final.

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Luckily for yours truly, it was a classy event. The people, the food, the venue, the band, the drinks, the organisers, the staff and even the weather. Everyone was made to feel incredibly welcome and it was very much appreciated.

The school reunion would have been interesting wearing VR headsets with filters that took 30 years off everyone.The school reunion would have been interesting wearing VR headsets with filters that took 30 years off everyone.
The school reunion would have been interesting wearing VR headsets with filters that took 30 years off everyone.

I turned up with a buddy I’ve kept in touch with since the early 90s, with the idea that we could both cling to each other like a life raft if we didn’t recognise anybody.

And then we saw them. A group of lads we hadn’t clapped eyes on since 1991 but spent arguably the best days of our lives with. After a few awkward “should we, shouldn’t we?” moments we walked over to say hello.

About an hour later, which felt like two minutes, it was like we’d just popped out for some milk in June 1991 and carried on the conversation where we left off in August 2022.

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The world has changed beyond all recognition since then but they hadn’t. It was worth turning up just for that.

It was incredible to be back in that environment. Some people wore badges with names and dates but it would’ve been quite something to slip on VR headsets with filters that took 30 years off everyone. Now there’s an idea, maybe next time? As yours truly is currently off the sauce, being in a room full of people who were knocking it back like they hadn’t seen their long-lost friends in three decades was sobriety’s equivalent of taking some mad hallucinogen before walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. It was great, they all looked happy and well. I wish we were 18 again and just starting out. I wouldn’t change a thing.