Pav’s Patch; General, professor, pilot . . . and me

HAVE you ever visited the Friends Reunited website? I used to be on it but then deleted myself — so to speak — because everyone seemed to have done so much better in life than me.

One of my friends from my 1970s schooldays is now a Royal Navy officer and flying helicopters, while another is head of languages at a university. Even the one no one liked has gone on to become a university professor.

A lad from junior school is a deputy chief constable and Bill Moore, who was with me at university on an Army scholarship, has become Gen William Hewitt Moore CBE and a former commanding officer of 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery.

And me, well I still live within five miles of where I was born and drive a beat-up Rover 25 which lets in water to the extent that you have to drive with the window open even in cold weather so that it doesn’t steam up.

So you get where I’m coming from. I’m hardly one of the seeded players when it comes to bragging rights. Consequently, I decided to take my name off the list. You see, another trouble with old schoolfriends is that when you meet them, you’ve stayed the same but they’ve always changed.

I have another friend who married an American girl whom he met in Spain. She is niceness personified but also very successful — she’s a judge — and every Christmas she sends me a card containing a picture of their daughter and a letter about what they’ve done over the year.

Well I say letter, it’s more like a list of achievements. The husband will always have knocked another five minutes off his marathon best and raised several thousand dollars for charity. The wife has been appointed to another five senior legal positions and will be an adviser to the vice-president.

And then we come to the daughter. She’ll have won 17 prizes at the county fair for her needlework; she’s top of the class; making progress at fencing, karate and playing the oboe; and also speaks four languages.

Now how do I, a lad from Dukinfield, compete with that? Let’s see . . . our James has got to level three on his X-Box James Bond game and can now fell baddies with one shot from his machine gun.

He’s also completed the entire Blackburn Rovers section in his Topps sticker album.

Of course, I’ve been equally successful, and scored a goal past Stuart at five-a-side last week. And yes, I know Stuart’s over 60.

It’s not fair you know.