We were supposed to meet at five. It seems we met earlier and earlier the older we got. Ten or fifteen years ago we would have said eight o’clock in the evening. Not five in the afternoon. That wasn’t the only thing that had changed. George had a thing with flour he had to explain to everyone who worked at the restaurant. From the guy in the cloak room via the butler to the sommelier. No one escaped his story of what would happen if there was anything with flour or milk in the food. Béarnaise and pepper sauce was okay for some reason. He was so busy telling bathroom stories that he often forgot to specify how he wanted the steak cooked or what he wanted to drink with his meal.
Peter was perhaps in many ways the youngest at heart in the group, but his anarchist past sometimes seemed a bit exaggerated. It was as if he had been part of something one evening at high school that was so soul shattering that he kept talking about it. There weren’t different stories it seemed, just new versions of the same night. He loved to appear as the rebel, and we let him get away with it. He had been a leader in a conservative youth party – but now he read communist newspapers. Not the truly radical ones, but those who had become household names and were recommended by the social elite. Radical newspapers did not advertise. But he had found his thing there. The fact that he was a food and wine snob helped to build the image of him as a radical inside the elite. There wasn’t a wine, starter, main course or dessert that couldn’t have been done better. This was of course communicated to both the waiters and others who cleared the table, whether they spoke the language or not.
Jimmy was himself as usual. He was just a guy who was in it for the fun. He also had hang-ups on some stories that had been told several times before. Like the interrail trip he had in the early 70s. Stories I had heard before got more and more diluted. His stories were funny, well told, and credible enough though.
And there we sat. Four friends. Gradually getting older. Four guys who clung to stories from a lost time and a youth when we were viral and exploratory. We were only years or maybe months from the stories George lived to tell. The stories of life’s small challenges that apparently made life a little more difficult, but a little more interesting for George.
Life is a strange friend – and I recalled an older man in the town where I grew up. He certainly had plans to live a long life and just be a little sick and make himself interesting. Over the years he had acquired a long list of both common and strange illnesses. But life deceived him. He went to bed as usual one evening after telling his nearest and dearest about all his troubles. He died in his sleep, and in that way, with a magnanimity that was not characteristic of him, the trouble was over for those closest to him. Life had tricked him for the last time.
This is what life had become. We ate, complained, toasted, laughed, teased the waiters, and told old stories everyone had heard before. And we told ourselves and others what a great evening it had been. It really was a good evening. It was always nice to meet the gang. It didn’t matter if it was all predictable and a repeat of the last time we met. That was the way it was now. We had grown older. The demands for experiences were no longer the same. And that was also perfectly fine. We all reach a terminal at some point. But we were at least still on the train.
Billy Bronco is telling you 