The Long Haul

          It’s funny how the 1960s keep popping up. This week, I got news that my 15-year-old grand-nephew, having seen the film A Complete Unknown, went out and bought the vinyl album, Highway 61 Revisited, first released in 1965. I was impressed. But he reportedly finds it hard to relate his newly discovered enthusiasm for Bob Dylan to the fact that I was in the audience of Dylan’s London concert in 1966 and have first-hand experience of the controversy featured in the film’s plot, his perceived “betrayal” of the acoustic folk music tradition.

          A couple of years after that concert, I spent a year in Sudan (then referred to as The Sudan), with no access to western music at all. I was one of a contingent of twenty or so newly graduated adventurers who had successfully applied to join the Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) scheme. Among our number were Paul and Jim, two of the nicest chaps I ever met, before or since. As it happens, we came together last week – as we do from time-to-time – and, after telling them about my grand-nephew’s musical epiphany, we discussed which side of the “betrayal” argument we had been on at the time. Given the vagaries of memory, it was hard to answer definitively, but I like to think I was not on the purist side. Otherwise, why would I have bought a ticket to the concert, given that I knew what to expect?

          Paul, Jim and I have never lived in close enough proximity for our friendship to be kept alive by default. Chance may have brought us together, but it has required conscious effort to maintain the relationship through the distances of place and circumstance. So, as well as occasional get-togethers, sometimes including partners and family, we have for the past few years fostered a tradition of the three of us meeting annually.

          These rendezvous started as long-ish country hikes – something all three of us have always enjoyed – and involved camping out for a couple of nights (of which the same cannot be said). However, the years took their physical toll and, over time, the hiking routes became less ambitious. I’m not saying it’s all over now, but last week’s outing was, literally, a walk in the park – albeit a country park, Dartington Estate and its formal garden, to be precise. But such gentler excursions do have advantages besides reducing the intensity of the physical challenges. There is much less logistical planning involved than is required for a day out in the rough or remote terrain favoured by seasoned hikers. Packed lunches are not needed, and conversation flows easier when one is not out of breath or obliged to walk single file on narrow tracks.

          But what is it about old friendships that make us want to perpetuate them? My experience is that those made in one’s formative years have a tendency to retain the quality of warm familiarity, even after prolonged periods of non-contact. Yet during those years of separation, each individual life develops, sometimes in ways that may be unexpected. Unless you keep track, the person you once knew may end up as someone you no longer relate to. Then what would you have to talk about, other than reminiscing about the sixties?

          There’s a pragmatic case to be made for dropping long-standing friendships that are deemed to have outlived their purpose – however “purpose” is defined. Self-interest, perhaps? The need to find a place in society. The need for self-affirmation. The need to satisfy nostalgic yearning. Well, if friendship served only to fulfil such needs, then its eventual redundancy could be expected. But friendship is not about pragmatism. Our old friends define our past just as much as we ourselves do, thus they lend meaning to our present as well.