Ten Years On

Ten years ago, FH and I were a young, carefree couple who lived in the trendy Marais district of Paris.
The life we live today probably bears little resemblance to that (aside from the fact we still cycle), but does that mean we are different people on the inside? Where it matters?

These were some of the questions I was asking myself this weekend, as we headed to Sète and Montpellier to meet up with friends of ours from that Parisian era: an Australian couple, who'd also been living and working in Paris in the stress-free, economically booming year 2000.
We hadn't seen them in exactly - er - ten years, but when they contacted us to suggest a meet-up on the French leg of their European holiday, we said OK.

We were open-minded and - in that typically 2010 Facebook-esque manner - curious to see how they'd "turned out".
The saving grace was, of course: they've also had two kids since the Parisian era.

So ten years on, there were not four of us, but eight, and we didn't go to an expensive bar at 11 pm... we went for an early bird supper in an appropriately down-market beach restaurant that we wouldn't feel too guilty about messing up.
We didn't manage to sustain a longer-than-three minute conversation... but we smiled with empathy and affection as we watched each other jump around trying to coax wily kids back into their seats or (as the case may be) admonish brazen little boys who enjoy whipping their trousers off on the beach and peeing into the wind.

We were all different and yet, all so very much the same as we were.

So I wonder if we ever do really change all that much? Maybe - as two good friends and I mused lately - we simply grow more into ourselves as we get older.

And - call it politeness if you will - we all gushed as truthfully as possible that none of us had changed physically in the past ten years.
"But," pointed out Dan, "that's probably normal. It's the 35 - 45 leap that'll be most shocking!"

Time will tell.

*Dan is a semi-professional photographer, which somehow seemed to intimidate FH and I into leaving our phone-cum-camera in its case for most of the weekend. The only shots we have (below) are the ones from Sunday afternoon, after they left.