It’s the “Saturday of the Century” in England! Harry marries Meghan at Windsor Castle, Chelsea beats Manchester United in the FA Cup Final at Wembley but the “main event” is taking place in Oxford - St Mary’s Hospital Medical School class of 1968 is having its 50-year reunion! This event conceived around a table in North Cadbury Court, the Somerset location of Tom & Suzanna Horton’s July 2016 wedding, has been in the planning for almost two years and well before most of the world had even heard of Meghan Markel.

Rob Horton did a brilliant job of organizing this our fourth class reunion, managing to track down and contact all but a very small handful of our surviving classmates. Several hadn’t made it to earlier reunions and so there were one or two old friends who I hadn’t seen for the best part of 40 years. Friday lunchtime at the historic Trout Inn on the side of the river Isis in the village of Wolvercote which is also the setting for Philip Pullman’s, recently published and eagerly awaited latest novel, The Book of Dust (which I just happened to be reading). A walking tour of Oxford on a warm and cloudless Saturday morning - providing the perfect excuse to miss the wall-to-wall coverage of the goings on down river in Windsor.

And finally, the actual “main event” - the Saturday evening reunion dinner - with much reminiscing, a few jokes, plenty of wine - but noticeably little beer. Oh how we’ve all matured - and I don’t just mean the almost universal grey hair, at least adorning those that still have hair! Many and varied careers, a few professors, quite a number of G.P.’s, the odd surgeon and a surprising number of anaesthetists. Now all mostly retired and in reasonable health, the enlarging waistlines notwithstanding!

All goes so well that there’s much talk of the next one! Don’t wait too long though - in five years perhaps, definitely not ten and definitely with Rob the organizer.....