Am I really that man at my wedding?

I've just spent three days in the past, which is a nice place to be. This happy regression even saw another screening of the wedding video.

This is far from the most watched video in the house, as that honour goes to whichever Star Wars film it is that the children are always slotting in the machine.

Twelve years isn't record breaking, but it is a time.

Outside the register office in Leeds, as we all stand in the chill April wind, a little girl throws confetti at us, and then screeches: "I got it all on mine self!"

On the sofa in the front room a 16-year-old Australian girl sprawls and laughs, watching the little girl. She laughs again at the boy standing next to the little girl, and laughs loudest of all at the wild-haired man.

At the reception the little girl and her brother pull faces, using their fingers to poke and stretch their features into grotesque masks. The wild-haired man reprimands them, and then leans towards the lens, pulling an even sillier face.

At this the teenager on the sofa laughs even more, and the video has to be re-wound, so that she can see the face-pulling all over again.

Everyone looks younger on the video, as is the way.

It has to be said that the bride and groom appear to be earlier models of their current selves. Some of the older relatives have died, some of the friends have evaporated.

Our parents look younger. And our children, who are watching with the teenager girl, don't yet exist. At the time of the video they were kicking their embryonic heels somewhere, waiting to be summoned, and no doubt arguing over whose turn it was to play on the pre-life Nintendo.

Our young Australian friend thinks the video is a hoot, especially the moments when she appears.

For the little girl and the big girl are the same person, separated by the years and her family's decision to emigrate.

We all lived together in the same house, their house, for some years, which is why they came to our wedding.

We rented rooms but became firm friends. They had three children, as we would do ourselves one day, even if this would have been alarming news to the youngish groom smiling on the wedding video in a suit from Next.

Such a fixture was I in that shared house that when the eldest boy was asked at primary school about his family, he said he had two daddies, Daddy Myles and Daddy Julian.

The middle girl and her mother visited us in York last week, and though we hadn't met for ten years it was as if we'd only seen each other last week.

The other two children had stayed in Perth with their father, the wild-haired man on the video. He is wild-haired no more but has a thinning thatch and a pony-tail instead.

Over three days we talked a lot, remembered things we'd forgotten, putting our minds into re-wind, letting images come juddering back.

The thing about the past is that it's always there, snatched by videos and photographs, or snagged by a dusty branch in the mind.

On another night we watch a re-run of ER instead. I discuss George Clooney's popularity with women, and tell our young Australian friend that my wife prefers Dr Greene, the balding and bespectacled doc played by Anthony Edwards.

My rediscovered young friend laughs out loud at this, saying: "How can anyone fancy someone who's not got any hair?"

The irony of this observation is lost on her, so, scratching my own meagre covering, I try to regain credibility.

"That Brad Pitt," I say, "is he dishy, then?" At this my young friend howls, "But he's so old!" If Brad Pitt's old, I daren't ask what that makes me.

21/01/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.