Hamish Champ: Tripping down memory lane... in a pub, of course

I spent most of last Saturday drinking in pubs. All in the cause of reminding one's self as to the power and value of friendship, you understand.

My head should have hurt like billy-o on Sunday morning but it didn't, despite the quantity I'd put away. Units? Wasn't counting them. Perhaps spreading large quantities of drink over a 12-hour period evens things out somewhat.

I've not undertaken a 12-hour drinking session for years. Not since the late 1980s, when I regularly visited chums in Edinburgh and when both my constitution and bank balance made such trips a possibility, have I frequented quite so many hostelries or drunk so much beer in the cause of binding fast the bonds of friendship.

It was 31 years ago, having completed our 'A' levels and with adulthood, university and careers beckoning, that my three best mates from school and I wandered around our 'manor' of Blackheath and Greenwich in South London, visiting our local pubs, taking stock of our lives - and taking photos of each other like we were in a band - and generally wondering where the hell we'd all be in a year's time.

'A year's time'. Back in 1979, at the age of 18, the idea of contemplating being 12 month's older was almost too fantastical to take on board. Indeed sitting in Greenwich Park near General Wolfe's statue one of us - I can't remember who - wondered further. "What about in 10 year's time? Where do we think we'll be then​?" We might as well have tried to come up with an answer to the question 'What is the meaning of life?'. I know now it's '42'.

Anyway, this past weekend the four of us got together again after an interval of more than 30 years - obviously all of us are knocking on 50 - to repeat our wanderings of that warm day in June 1979. We revisited our old haunts, took photos at the same spot as ones we'd taken three decades ago and generally caught up on where the Bus of Life had taken us in the intervening years: marriages, kids, jobs, highs and lows, etc.

We started our day of reminiscing in a pub, of course. It had changed beyond recognition from when we used it back then, but then then they all had, the ones we went into. It merely served to add another dimension to our get-together.

As it happens, one of our quartet pointed to another fundamental difference from the summer of '79, namely that the range and quality of beers on offer in the pubs we visited had markedly improved. Or perhaps, another of our party offered, it was because when we knocked back beers as teenagers our respective quality control monitors were permanently set at 'low' and 'cheap'.

At midnight we parted company but vowed to stay in touch and at the very least reconvene in 2040, when - God willing - we'll all be knocking 80. Who knows where life will have taken us in the meantime, but while we might be doddery old duffers we'll still go to the pubs we knew as young men. Assuming, that is, that like us they're still open for business.

Pubs visited/beers drunk on the '31 Years On' Tour

The Railway - Blackheath (Sharp's Doom Bar; Sambrook Brewery's Wandle; Timothy Taylor's Landlord)

The Princess of Wales - Blackheath (Fuller's London Pride)

The Hare & Billet - Blackheath (Greene King's IPA)

The Greenwich Union - Greenwich (Meantime Brewery's London Pale Ale)

The Spanish Galleon - Greenwich (Shepherd Neame's Spitfire)

The Coach & Horses - Greenwich (Sharp's Doom Bar)

The Admiral Hardy - Greenwich (Heineken)