College Reunion

Ranjit deejays at a folk music nightclub.

His parents are proud.

Charlotte is a spanner-munching mechanic called Chesney,

those trampoline breasts lost forever down a drain.

Laurence made half a million doing something I don’t understand,

then lost it in Africa.

He still owes me twenty quid.

Nadia climbed Ben Nevis without her make-up bag.

It was very scary.

Terry’s on the dole

and won’t come off it unless he can be an actor or a dancer.

He still impersonates Michael Jackson

like nobody I’ve ever known.

Kate swam the Channel from Cornwall to Brittany.

Her legs are more oarlike than I remember them.

Stuart works in a bank.

Declan still says “Time to liberate the Netherlands”

whenever he goes to the toilet.

Farouk has been on trial for lobbing rocks

at his girlfriend’s window.

The case was shambolic he insisted,

spilling peanuts into the ashtray.

Karen doesn’t do those storyboard collages

with the mattress springs and egg-cups anymore.

She works in a bank.