My experience has generally been good. In fact, revisiting the past seems to be helping me on my way forward. When I left my boarding school, after four disastrous years in 1970, I only kept in touch with a friend whom I had known before we both went there. That friendship is still alive. There was a nine year pause and when we met up again, he was living in Basel in Switzerland, working as a toxicologist and I was a Cologne busker! We were both living abroad and speaking German. We had even more in common then, because we had several overlapping tastes in music, similar politics and in the intervening years, Simon had become a football fan. He now lives near New York and I have no doubt things would be just fine if he walked through my door this evening.
Through the internet, I have tentatively established contact with old boys from the old boarding school. Now we are talking to each other as grown men rather than teenagers, I find that my problems were by no means unique. I am also making new friends in one of the least expected ways. Of the three dates which have already been confirmed for my UK visit in September, two were directly the result of contacts with former RHS boys. They have turned out to be quite as kind and supportive as Mudcatters - and that can't be bad.