Outside a visit to the dentist, there are few things in life as unappealing as a school reunion. That’s particularly the case when it marks an anniversary with a big number attached. In our case, 30 years.
On the face of it, it’s a micro-disaster in the making. The plan is to take a hundred or so men and women – many of whom are deep in the grip, knowingly or otherwise, of a mid-life crisis – wrench them away from their daily lives and transport them back to the boarding school where they were all teenagers together. You then throw in a free bar and disco – and let them get on with it.
It sounds like the pretext of a particularly cringey Channel 5 reality show, one in which Davina McCall emotes sympathetically alongside a therapist, who’s on hand to help pick up the pieces once bourgeois lives have been shattered.
You realised what you got was a snapshot shorn of all the horrid bits – the unrequited loves, the divorces
Before my own big day arrived, spirits among my cohort of Old Ardinians were running high.
Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in