I HAVE stupidly set in motion plans for my school group’s 20 year reunion.

It was semi-inevitable, really, because I planned the ten year one, but this is already proving to be a way more serious undertaking.

I have started early because there are 130 people to track down, and to hopefully pin down to one place in a certain month of the year. And that’s not even beginning to get into what their individual opinions on what we should do / eat / listen to on the night are.

There have been so many issues to consider, especially because our year group – in common with many other graduates of grammar schools in our area - spread to the four corners of the world, given the relative lack of employment variety and opportunity in our hometown in Northern Ireland.

The majority of my friends from school live in England and Scotland and plan to stay there for the rest of their lives. Others have had children and decided to return home to the support of their wider families if their career has permitted it – and they’ve certainly enjoyed taking advantage of the property prices in Northern Ireland!

The inescapable online site Facebook has obviously been a key tool in making a start in tracking everyone down, and, in fact, it took me only about a week to locate almost 90 people on there and add them all to one long guest list.

And one unexpected complication arose - one of the people in our year has changed sex, something which is not widely known.

I feel in a complete quandary because I know that this person was severely bullied and did not enjoy their experience at school, so I’m still thinking about how to address that one.

I was encouraged by the initial mad flurry of activity and of people naming names and becoming rather excited / petrified at the thought of spending an evening in the company of former schoolmates.

And there was clearly a lot of nosying at the profiles of other people – who looked old? Who had children? - and a lot of shock as names from the past cropped up and people realised that they had totally forgotten some people existed.

I experienced this myself when I scanned our school panoramic photograph, which featured the entire year group, and stared blankly at a few faces, unable to believe that I couldn’t place them at all.

Several of my close friends have contacted me to chat more about the plans, confessing their own excitement or terror, and practically everyone has also remarked that it seems, bizarrely, so long ago, but yet they can remember certain things as if they only happened yesterday.

Let’s hope we can all work together to plan something memorable to mark the occasion.