Memories may matter

MEMORY TEST

Yes, that's me. Almost exactly half a century ago (gulp!). The 2 women were over here on holiday from Ireland. Aileen (foreground) and Mary, if I remember right. I'd got talking to them at a bus stop and offered to act as their guide for a few days, so I hope they got to see a few places they'd otherwise have missed out on. The following Easter a friend and I went on a driving tour of Ireland, and one of our stops was in Clonmel, the small town where they lived and worked in a bank. I never saw them again after that.  This photo turned up during a tidy up, and it made me realise how little I can recall about that period in my life.

Who was that 20 year old? Very much me, very much not me. He would have tried imagining what the future might be like for himself, but without any clear idea of what he might become or where he might go. Whatever he was thinking, it certainly wasn't what would happen in his real future.

He wouldn't have known that he'd start out on one career, only for it to fall apart very quickly. And eventually begin another that would develop and change over three and a bit decades. He wouldn't have even conceived of the idea of working in Computers (it wasn't yet called IT when I started!). Or that he'd spend most of his working life in England.  

He wouldn't have known that he would be twice married.  One union that wasn't quite as short lived or disastrous as that first career attempt, but which ended as badly.  The other lasting, like that second career, across more than three decades, and it being with the love of his, my, life.

He wouldn't have known that there would be many different homes, nine of which he'd have some ownership of.  Or that there would some surprisingly interesting cars to drive.  That he would, late in life become an ice hockey fan, and would have a late life 'career' as a volunteer helping people with mental health issues.  Or that he'd experience some of his own mental health concerns.  And he certainly wouldn't know he'd get gout, because it's wasnt the 18th century!

There's so much he didn't, couldn't know.  Because we don't, do we?  Life was still to happen to that 20 year old.  Not in any kind of linear fashion, not with any great clarity about the direction being headed in.  But full of twists and turns and surprise after surprise.  It happened, and now he's me.  Still uncertain, still without clarity, and still imagining futures that will probably never come to pass.  

But he's now content with his life.  That's the one thing I wish he'd known.