Today I had an interesting experience. It's one that I wasn't sure about in the run-up to it, and I might even say that I was nervous enough to be almost "dreading" it — but I'm pleased to report that it all went well.

The experience in question was meeting up with someone who was one of my best friends back during our mutual school days, but someone whom I haven't seen for more than 20 years. I had, for many years, assumed that our lives had simply diverged, and that was that — it's happened with plenty of other people in the past, so one more wasn't a particular surprise.

Imagine how surprised I was to get a message from my Dad a little while back, though, telling me that one of his friends had happened to come into contact with this erstwhile friend of mine, and that the latter was interested in reconnecting with me.

I initially wasn't sure what to make of the situation. As I say, our lives (and lifestyles) had diverged significantly around our university years, as we had gone to different places and studied different subjects — though in a peculiar twist of fate, I did spend two of my three years at university living with his then-girlfriend. Not in a dodgy way, I might add; we were just friends, and it seemed optimal for everyone involved to come to some sort of arrangement.

Anyway, at some point in our third year of study, my erstwhile friend went over to Europe to continue his studies and, as our time as students came to an end, we sort of lost touch. As I say, at the time I felt like it was mostly a case of our lives and lifestyles moving in fundamentally incompatible directions — sad, to be sure, since we had been the best of friends at school, but an understandable symptom of growing up and growing older.

Thus it was that I arranged to meet him this evening in the hotel where I'm staying for my monthy visit to work. He happened to be in the area and definitely seemed keen to meet, so I decided that I would take a chance and see what would happen. I was nervous — scared, even — but also very conscious that 20+ years can make a lot of differences in someone's life and way that they live, so I was hopeful that we'd be able to sort of… "reboot" and see what happened there.

I'm delighted to report that things went well. A lot has happened in 20+ years for both of us, and we spent a lot of time catching up on things. But at the same time, my friend that I once knew was well and truly back. He was not the person that I had drifted out of touch with for one reason or another; he was the person that I used to know, and before long we were swapping stories, sharing truths and talking just like the big 20+ year gap had never happened.

I'm happy about this, for a number of reasons. I'm happy that I reconnected with someone who was once an important part of my life. I'm happy that his life seems to have gone in a positive direction, even if the course of it has taken a very different trajectory to mine. And I'm happy that the person I used to know is still there. Or has come back. Or some combination of all of those things.

To put it another way, this was a worthwhile exercise that I'm glad I took a chance on. It would have been so easy to make an excuse and try to get out of it — I've done this in the past with social occasions I've been uneasy about — but no, I decided that what I needed to do was take a chance on this, and just see where things ended up.

As it happens, I feel like they ended up in a good place. I hope this is the beginning of not just one rekindled friendship, but several — as he put me in touch with a couple of other people who had expressed an interest in reconnecting. We shall have to see where that all goes.

Anyway, after all that, my "social battery", as the kids call it these days, is well and truly depleted, so I am going to sit and play video games until it is time to go to bed. Good night!