Dear LPG,

I was talking with a couple of friends recently and we found ourselves looking at the subject of long lost friends and family.  There were eight of us caught up in this conversation and, without exception, all of us could think of more than one person who we used to be very close with but who we have not seen for years.

Firstly, there were a surprising number of our family members that were reported to have slipped under the radar over the years, but there is usually a family member that you can use as the first link to a chain when trying to find out more about them even if they have become geographically distant.  We decided that there is usually one family member that represents a vital chain in that link.  For more than one member in our group, some sort of family feud was the reason for the estrangement, with the result that they have been deliberately avoiding a brother, sister or cousin who they were once very close to but, because of some family dispute that happened years ago they just don’t talk anymore.     

Then we each started thinking about where we last saw that long lost friend that was once so significant in our lives, how important that friendship was back in the day and how it got lost in the first place.  Many of us came to the consensus that they were old work colleagues or school friends that we could not do without once.  But then a change of school or job forces your lives to take different paths, and again sometimes there is the inevitable difference of opinion which can often be another cause for a rift between friends.

There is usually an old address book in a drawer that you have not seen for years which has an old telephone number.  I can think of one that is so old that the telephone numbers started with letters, but it still might be worth trying even though telephone numbers have a habit of changing pretty frequently these days.

Getting in touch with old friends is something that each of us said we had been meaning to do but, for some, life keeps getting in the way; for others, it is a reluctance to phone and open old wounds and yet others are worried about having missed the opportunity to renew the friendship altogether. We are all getting older and life is too short as they say.

 In the end, we all made a commitment to at least pick up the phone and make the effort to say ‘Hello’ which is the point of my message. 

There were only eight of us and we all could think of someone who we should call, so I suspect that there are lots of LPG readers who could do with a reminder when it comes to making the first move on the road to rekindling an old and nearly forgotten friendship.  

Please use my message as a reminder to make that call…

BA, Brockley