Meeting up with old friends after a gap of a year or two is always a gamble. No matter how well you knew someone back when you were fresh-faced, clueless youngsters, as the years go by and the chances to catch up get fewer and further between, you can’t help but worry that while your backs were turned, the old magic quietly up and died.

Actually, that’s bollocks. Let’s be honest—when we meet up with old friends, the thing that worries us most is that they’ve become insufferable dickbags. We dread being trapped in a pub, limply recounting our recent movements just to kill the two hours till closing time. Or, worse, awkwardly sifting through smelly old boxes of shared memories, scrabbling for something to bond over unconvincingly until the moment of the loose-armed hug and the promise to stay in touch.

All of which sounds very miserable, but I’m only talking about what you’re scared of before you meet up. Almost invariably, the meeting itself is a reminder that people actually don’t change very much at all, and that that’s both a beautiful and a ridiculous thing.

Remember that kid who dumped on the seat of a dumper truck because it was called a dumper truck? Yeah, he’s a respected environmental scientist now, and thinky people ask his opinion on stuff for newspapers. And he has children. And if he isn’t good enough at being an environmental scientist, he’ll lose his job, and those children will starve.

All of which would make you think he’d have become a grim, serious, weighty individual with a look of stone-cold gravity permanently carved into his face. In actual fact, you can stick five pints down him, and he’ll be gibbering like a lunatic, and trying to think up unconvincing excuses to avoid his job and his kids and sink another five.

And that’s either the best or the worst thing about humankind. I can’t be arsed to think about it right now. I’m going to have another drink with Craig and thank the lord above that he’s the exact same dickhead I remember.