Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu…

So long, farewell, au Wiedersehen, good night. I hate to go and leave this pretty sight. So long, farewell, au wiedersehen, adieu. Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu.

Have you seen this particular yieu? Well I haven’t for a while; not a pretty sight is he? I’ve masked his identity to protect the innocent, but even so some of you might recognise him. Funny isn’t it, you spend twenty years seeing someone almost daily and then, all of a sudden, they’re gone. Not gone as in gone ‘dead’ in this case, but gone ‘gone’ to all intents and purposes.

They say that the test of friendship is that, even after a break of years, when you bump into each other again you pick up just where you left off. In my experience that isn’t quite true. The water that passes under that bridge can change in lots of ways. Sometimes it becomes murky and discoloured, runs faster or slower, or it can even become a tumult beset by rapids. Things and people change. We all do.

Sometimes it’s simply about priorities. Life changes, things move on and suddenly you are far too busy to have time for the past. Or it can be part of the letting go process; the past can be a dangerous place to live and ‘clean breaks’ are sometimes cathartic. Laziness can also play a part, it’s so much easier not to bother - and then there are those who simply don’t need keep in touch.

What an empty ring that has to it: ‘Keep in touch.’ So may people don’t even when they’ve promised that they will. I’ve lost count of the number of people who were going to keep in touch and then simply didn’t. For my part I don’t promise to keep in touch, but I do Facebook.

So Facebook. I know that it gets bad press for making friendship a solitary, remote experience, a damned fine way of never seeing people, an all-too-easy lazy man’s way to keep in touch. But when distance or circumstance or just plain embarrassment stops you from doing the face-to-face it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing. At least it is to me.

Anyway, the chap in the picture - well, he was today’s cull. Don’t worry the sacrifice is all mine. He won’t notice and he won’t care or even feel hurt about it. He’s one of those people that have an account but simply don’t use it. He never, ever, has and he never, ever, will. He tells me so each time we meet up for a pint. It’s a pity, I’d like to have more contact but he doesn’t do e-mail or even answer his phone.

Keeping in touch is a one way street sometimes.