I took a risk yesterday

and, after searching in a social media site, made contact with someone I last saw over twenty years ago.

This may not seem very unusual to most people but, for me, it was. It is not the sort of thing I usually do at all. I have never been the sort of person who can "just call on" someone else. I have never understood the sort of social life where people contact other people on impulse and suggest going somewhere. No, I make arrangements to do it in advance. Most of my friends are the same. I think it is a generational thing. 

I grew up in a family where visitors came by prior arrangement. We went to them by prior arrangement. It did not happen often. It is also highly unlikely other people were very different. The means of communication was different back in the last century. There were no mobile phones and no computers. If you wanted to communicate with someone you did so by letter, by phone or face to face. There were telegrams and eventually that wonder we called "the fax". 

Not so long ago I was talking to someone who said much the same thing. He was talking about how social arrangements for Saturday nights were made at school during the week. If someone did not turn up at the appointed place at the appointed time there was no way of getting in touch. I tried to explain this to an eight year old the other day and he could not understand it at all. He has a mobile phone. It can do no more than make and receive calls to a limited range of people but it is still instant communication. 

But is communication really any easier now? The demise of the phone book has left us without the means to simply look a number up. There is no equivalent for mobile phones. Accessing the electoral roll is no longer possible without good cause. (You can tell them who you are looking for and why and they will confirm or deny or, in very rare instances, give you an address.)

It is why I went to social media. The name I was looking for is not a "Mary Brown" or "John Smith" sort of name. It is unusual. I found four people with that name on social media. Three of them live in other countries so I thought the fourth was likely. I wrote the message and pressed send. If nothing happened then at least I had tried.

Yes, I was lucky. It was the right person. They professed to be delighted to hear from me, had "often wondered" etc. The information I needed was quickly supplied (although I wondered if they would even have it) and there was the "we must meet". I wonder if we will. If they do contact me again to make arrangements will I want to go? Would we have maintained contact if we lived closer? I doubt it but it did set me wondering about the ways and means of contacting people now...and then.