THIS Saturday, a large group of men who have entered the sixth decade of their lives will gather in a school hall in Manchester.

It will not necessarily be a pretty sight, but it will be a night filled with memories, most of them receding as much as the hairlines.

Sadly, I will not be at this school reunion, due to (a) work commitments and (b) I’ve been to one before.

School reunions are funny old things which need to be approached with extreme caution, even when two of your old classmates get in touch after 30-odd years to urge you to make the trip.

I have very fond memories of my schooldays in Manchester and made many good friends with whom I now, via the wonders of technology, share a wealth of memories.

(Indeed, three of us are now emailing each other regularly in the search for three missing three names from the 1H register of 1969, joining the likes of Bogie, Croke and Titterington.) It inspired me to dig out all the photos and cuttings my late Dad had compiled for me and whatever you think about your schooldays, I defy you not to have a good smile at the recollections.

The photograph here was among them.

There are people out there who can immediately reel off the names of old schoolpals in such photos.

I, however, took two minutes to recognise me, so I was delighted to find my Dad had written all the names on the back.

Which was why I was excited to learn a few years ago that there was to be a reunion of old boys from those days and surrounding years and I duly signed up to take that shambling trip down Memory Lane.

Despite all our best intentions, we had all lost touch, but I was sure that there would be an emotional rendezvous at the scene of many of our teenage crimes.

I duly turned up at the school to find a refectory (there’s that wonderful old school word again) packed with suits, bulging shirt fronts and thinning hair.

Surely, I had accidentally stumbled into a meeting of the Retired Chartered Accountants Association, I thought, and was about to turn tail and run and a face when I recognised came towards me.

“Ah, Butterworth,” said my old history teacher, “how wonderful to see you.”

He then spent a remarkable ten minutes recalling my schooldays and football exploits in the minutest detail.

I spent my time nodding. I had to as he was talking about my life and it would have been terribly rude to admit that I didn’t remember most of it.

“Come and meet some of your old friends,” he concluded and led me into a group of people who must have been teachers, because they sure as hell looked older than I did.

I was introduced to several middle-aged men who could not have been more alien to me if they had been wearing their ears in the middle of their faces.

It very quickly became clear that I was sharing a room with school chums who had fulfilled the first part of the description by sharing the same educational establishment, but wholly fallen down on the ‘chum’ bit by never actually having met me during the six years we learned together.

So when you are tempted to take the plunge back in time, try to dig out your old school photos and pick out the one spotty youth whose name you can’t possibly remember.

Because he’s the one you will be sitting next to during the meal.