THE PATH OF SEVENTEEN YEARS

I graduated seventeen years ago today. I had short hair, I wore a long black robe and I sat with the people I'd studied with, in a hot, uncomfortable hall. One-by-one our names were called; hundreds and hundreds of students in a continuous wave of hats and applause. Two hours of clapping.

It's funny now. I don't remember the exact moment of going up and shaking the Vice Chancellor's hand. I must have done it - I've literally got the t-shirt (and the certificate) to prove it. Yet I don't recall that culmination. Not half as well as I remember my long hours in the library.

I do remember standing on the grass outside the tennis courts. Steinhausen was there with his parents (who looked exactly like him) and I remember thinking he should have worn better shoes than his dog-eared old loafers. Then, I didn't know at the time that I was wearing my mortarboard backwards.

I remember Caroline smiled at me - and I realised I probably wouldn't see her again. On a course where there were more people called Dave than there were actual girls (University of Bath, Physics, Class of 2000), the Carolines were quite unique: pretty, smart and fun - yet somehow mysteriously studying physics with a massive crowd of comic-book nerds who could quote Monty Python verbatim.

My parents were proud of me. They beamed and they took photos with a disposable camera, and they chatted to other parents and they applauded and they asked my friends what I was like and they did all the other embarrassing things that all the other parents did, and on that muggy afternoon at the end of all things, I didn't mind in the slightest.

It seems funny, looking back now. Seventeen years. I was 22 - in a different world. Yet, time connects that day to this. There's a path, a set of events that could be traced, with every hour linking then with now. I wonder how I would have reacted had Future Me appeared and told me what would happen. 911, flumpbook, smartphones, Iraq, terror, youthwork, merging churches, technical writing, piano teaching, depression, anxiety, Zimbabwe-friends, song-writing, camping, friends, more technical writing, team leading, group leading, tea-making, more friends, coalition governments, President Business, the Yamaha CP300, the Nord Stage 2 EX, a couple of laptops, more depression, a blog, a quiz, hundreds of sleepless nights and not a whole lot of physics.

Hard to tell.

Caroline went into the army. Steinhausen disappeared. I went home, met Paul and started youthwork and that inexorable chain that leads to grey hair, to weary eyes and to here at this very desk, today.

I'm tired. I'm really tired.