Friends Reunited

A few years ago I signed up for Friends Reunited, probably for the same reason that most people do - just to see. And of course like everyone else I filled my little box with what I'd been doing. And left it like that.

But I kept getting those gentle reminder emails saying I hadn't updated my profile so, with all good intention, I set about it. Only to think, a few minutes in "what the fuck am I doing? Why am I spending time telling people I've deemed suitable for jettisoning what I've been up to since the last time they walked passed in the street, pretending not to see me?"

So I told them I tap danced at Kings Cross Underground Station, I worked in McDonalds as a trainee chip fryer, that I'd been convicted of a crime I did not commit, and since escaping the high security stockade I'd been working as a soldier of fortune, that I was responsible for the hyper inflation in the Wiemar Republic, that I was lentil eating, sandal wearing, bearded DJ who'd discovered huge numbers of British bands in the 1970's. And no one was any the wiser.

Which is kind of the point. Friends Reunited is full of people who were never really anyones friend - just people who were acquaintances, who, when the push came to the shove, were easily replaced by another lot of equally easily replaced acquaintances. People whose absence you never noticed. But you shouldn't feel too bad about this. We're all someone's acquaintance.