It was time for the annual
lads' Christmas dinner (essentially an annual festive meeting of some of my friends from college). Christmas came early this year as one of us is off to Africa for three years (I will let you know very soon if it turns out to be me) and this was the only available window for the 9 Musketeers (as we never refer to ourselves).
I was 19 when I met most of these guys and that was 19 years ago and look at us, still getting together. Luckily I haven't changed a bit, but all the others have got either fat or bald or both. I didn't tell them this, but could see by the horrified way they looked at my face that they were thinking "How come he has remained so young looking, whilst age has withered us so?"
We went to an Irish pub in the centre of town and drank Guinness. Then we went to the restaurant upstairs, where rather wonderfully there was no music (we are all a bit deaf now and it was nice to be able to hear each other) and even more remarkably, no other customers. It was a room lined with oak panelling and nice paintings and it felt like we were in our own private club. And the food was excellent. It's highly recommended for any groups of old men who want to be left alone who might be reading.
Each year I confidentally predict that one of our number will meet their demise at some point in the next twelve months, but so far I have been wrong year after year (They were lucky this time, I only have to be lucky once). In fact most years one of the boys has procreated (often the birth had coincided with the dinner a bit spookily) thus making a nonsense of my Nostradaman skills. Still three of us remain unreproduced, so there is some hope for the destruction of humanity - my ultimate goal.
One of us at least will be dead by next year. Two of us will be forty, which is probably worse.
It is good to see old friends and we talked and laughed until tears ran down our faces. Then at about 10.30 we were all a bit tired and decided to make our ways home. We are very old.
