Wednesday, 3 August 2016

MY FRIEND IN RIO

So, it turns out my old uni flatmate is now the person responsible for keeping the BBC on air during the Olympics.

No exaggeration. He oversees the team behind the broadcast tech, and he's currently in Rio de Janeiro, wiring cables. And to think, he once wedged my milk behind a radiator before putting it back in the fridge.

It's weird where life takes us. He's in Rio: successful, important and impossibly clever; I'm here... eating a biscuit.

I remember we'd roam around in his K-reg VW Polo. It was his pride and joy; he had a portable CD player he'd wired up to the tape deck. We'd talk about the future and what we'd like to do when we graduated. I was determined to go back to Reading and make a difference to young people; he was intent on being an engineer. It was like a different world that, now that I think about it.

Maybe it was. Maybe it was just the other side of a wormhole, and when university finished, we all fell through into this one without realising. Some days, I really wish I could go back.

I don't really wish that. I don't even think I'd go to Rio and be a big-shot engineer if I had the chance. I think life is so unique and so precious that wherever we are right now there are things to be thankful for, and there are hopes to aim for, and there is life to be lived that no-one else can live.

By the way, it costs about as much as a deposit on a house to learn how to fly a helicopter. I looked it up.

And this is a nice biscuit.

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