Fifty years of mateship

There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just blurt it out. Or maybe not say anything. This week marks 50 years that I have been friends with (alphabetically) Peg and Rob. We met in the first week of Second Class at Pennant Hills Infants' School -- February, 1960. We were 6 or 7 years old. We almost learned to tie our shoelaces together. (I still resent that a bit because if Peg HAD learned, I would have fallen over and cried, and Rob would have made fun of me.) We went to infants' school, primary's school and high's school together, as firm friends. (I was often the firmest, but precocious in finding ways of dealing with it.) Rob usually did my Maths homework (which is perhaps why he is today a mathematicmatitian and I am scarcely numerate, so he owes me) and Peg usually did my ... come to think of it, I don't remember Mister Peg helping me with homework at all so he can get fucked. Oh yeah, I think he wrote some English essays for me. All is forgiven, cunt.

Peg and Rob remained my steadfast, loyal, loving friends during our teens, 20s, 30s, our 40s and our 50s. We are all approaching our 60s, and Rob and Peg are still my best mates, apart from Baz le Tuff, a relative newcomer, because Baz, the closest of all my mates, IS a relative, on two sides of our families ...and a newcomer (rhymes with 'pariah'). We didn't meet Barry until about 1965, so he's the new boy and we will never let him forget it -- nyaaah nyaah nyaah.

I don't want to say any more, except this. Peg and Rob and I learned together to read and count and write, and to pass through the old age of youth and enter the youth of old age, and our intellects and senses of humour have been forged in the same ... forge or whatever the fuck that forgery thingo is called. The loyalty of my mates through the thicks and thins of my life has been incredible, enough to bring a grown man to jeers.

I consider myself, with characteristic inhumility, the luckiest man alive for many reasons, and not the least of these is that I love and am still loved by two mates from Miss Gordon's 2nd Class at Penno Infants'. Oh, and Baz too -- the new boy. I love you all -- and I AM NOT A POOFTER BY SAYING THAT, OK? YOU'RE ALL MORE POOFIE THAN I AM. JESUS! I FUCKED A GIRL THE SAME YEAR YOU ALL DID, SO JUST LEAVE OFF, WILL YOU? YOU FUCKING POOFTERS. JESUS! CAN'T TAKE A JOKE.