YOU get a special sort of pleasure when you visit old friends from many years ago.
I’ve just returned from a weekend in Norwich that warmed the cockles of even my battered and barnacled heart.
This was the plan. Three cynical old journalists who misspent their twenties in that fine East Anglian city would book into a posh hotel there – so that’s me, Bad Gav and Sir Johnny Vino.

Then we would hook up with our old mucker, Marcus Aurelius, for some light ales and a tour of our old haunts (i.e. dive bars and nightclubs).

Well, we saw Marcus all right, who is even more laid-back and laconic than we remembered him. He’s living proof you can still be cool in your forties.

But other aspects of this tour of the dinosaurs didn’t exactly go to plan. For one thing, we didn’t visit any nightclubs or any of our old pubs, come to that.

And Johnny Vino rocked up with his new young girlfriend, Janey Hotel-Motel, in tow.

We weren’t expecting her, and it might have upset the delicate chemistry of the occasion, but it didn’t because she fitted in well and proved something of a bonus to the trip.

We also met Marcus’s partner Regina, and attended the aftermath of a birthday party for their two-year-old daughter.

We had earlier spent an hour in a department store arguing over what present to buy for the child, before settling on a cuddly toy polar bear.

I’d wanted us to buy a bizarre ballet-dancing "cuddly" rat but the others vetoed it, saying it was “hideous”.

Turns out the rat thing, called Angelina Ballerina, is highly prized among tot trendies.

It’s got its own website. “Check it out!”, as the moronic DJs on Wirral’s Buzz 97.1 are so fond of saying.

While looking at Angelina’s website earlier today, I discovered that she is meant to be a mouse not a rat.

Hey-ho, in Cuddlytoyland, as in human society, you often discover that the most mousey of creatures are really rats in disguise.

I think it rather clever of the toy manufacturers to give our infants such important lessons in life.

My, how easy it is to be sidetracked in these blogs. Back to the weekend … we also saw McBlurt, an old Scottish friend from Norwich, and Martin Sobersuits, who like most people working for the regional press these days is thoroughly brassed off and seeking pastures new.

We also saw some women friends from the old days on the Norwich newspapers, who in different ways were coping with the difficulties and cruel blows that life can chuck your way as you get older.

It was a thrill to see them all, and to see Norwich (a most beautiful old city) once again.

We all got a bit giddy and potty-mouthed together but that was also to be expected.

As stuffy old magistrates used to say: “Drink had been taken in considerable quantities by all concerned.”

But as you laugh and laugh and talk and laugh some more with old friends, you realise how right you were to be their mate in the first place, all those years ago, when the world was much more innocent.

MY journey by car from New Brighton to Norwich and back was every bit as stressful as my journeys by rail between Merseyside and Scotland two weeks previously.

The road to Norwich is mainly single carriageway, clogged with trundling cabbage lorries and with flatlanders in Skodas who really shouldn’t be out for a drive so soon after having sex with their cousins.

The whole journey was littered with impudent police warnings and giant speed cameras. How did our society get into so craven a state that we will put up with such interference with personal freedom?

Besides anything else, speed cameras on roads and the constantly changing speed limits actually distract drivers so much that they really just add to the dangers on the roads.

Are modern cops too thick to understand that? I think they probably are.

One section of the road to Norwich was marked as a special “Death Road” by huge blood-red notices which advise passing drivers they are statistically unlikely to reach their destinations alive. Talk about “Welcome To East Anglia”.

The Death Road notices contain statistics on how many accidents there have been on that road in the past year; how many of the accidents had caused injuries; and how many deaths had resulted.

I remember the cops in Kent pulling a similar statistical stunt some years ago. But then an angry resident put up a rival notice, which, in identical lettering, advised drivers thus …
- Number of burglaries reported in this area last year: 1,344.
- Number of burglaries solved by police in this area last year: 4.
Soon after that telling point about wrong police priorities was made, the cops took down their stupid road smash propaganda.

AS SOON as I got back to New Brighton I needed a drink or four so I headed off to Hell’s Waiting Room.

Slutty Hardman was in there and so was Eamon Lairyshirts but there was no-one singing for once.

Then Billy Bustimes sidled up to me. He confessed he’d had a “really big bust-up” with the Bacardi Queen in the Waiting Room a few nights ago, while I was away.

I know what the bust-up was about, but I can’t go into details here. Hey, I’m indiscreet, but not THAT indiscreet.

I don’t want anyone accusing me of dabbling my fingers into the stuff of people’s souls.

But nevertheless I will help Bustimes and the BQ get over their differences. Peace shall reign between them. I shall do that by playing the diplomat.

I’ll be like Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, cajoling antagonists amid all the strife of Hell’s Waiting Room, just as he does in Palestine, Haiti, Africa and other cauldrons of hatred around the world.

I will adopt the patient, kindly face of Kofi. As to his other characteristics, I already possess them ...

For instance, Kofi’s struggled successfully with embarrassing oil-for-food allegations.

And I batted deftly away my great skittles-for-beers scandal of 1992. Purely an administrative error on my part, I assure you.

When Kofi’s at work at his desk at the United Nations he is surrounded by inefficiency, spite, wastefulness, constantly growing crises and Machiavelian back-stabbing.

Well, that’s always been my experience of the workplace too.

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