"Wayne and Carole"

In 1990 I was hired by a rather unscrupulous software house to work on a project in Barrow. I have fond memories of this time, partly because it's been over twenty-two years since those early morning, dark, winter drives across to Barrow but mainly because I worked with an excellent pair of lads called Roger and Rob.

At lunch times we'd play a great game involving a bunch of pennies to decide who had to venture out into windy, rainy Barrow to buy lunch. The game was one of those ostensibly simple ones, with a couple of straightforward rules, that generated loads of complex outcomes. I cannot for the life of me remember how it was played but the stakes were high and I know I didn't get too many soakings.

At lunchtimes, I'd listen to Jesus Jones' 'Doubt' on my CD player whilst playing Taipei on the first copy of Windows that I ever encountered. And it was also during this happy period that I discovered I could 'do' computing, which rather set me up for my life to date.

The happiness came to an abrupt conclusion when the project finished and, in the absence of any new work, the software house simply laid us off. We'd been used like freelance staff except on cheap rates.

I remember this period very well because the project finished the day before my eldest daughter was born!

Consequently, I needed to find a job and sharpish. It was a lot more complicated in those days when there was no world wide web, no home computers or printers, so that even getting a copy of your CV to an employment agency was a bit of a mission but, happily, when Charlie was just six weeks old, I got a job interview to work as a contractor for National Power in Harrogate.

God knows how nervous I was about the interview which was conducted by the project manager, Rachel, and one of the systems analysts, Wayne. She was small, dark and pretty, he was a tall, handsome Canadian. They were kind of like Barbie and Ken but with the swapped hair colouring. Or was Ken blond? Anyway...

To cut a long story short and also to avoid the bit where I lied in the interview, I got the job, which turned out very well indeed. The work was interesting, the project team were great, I played squash most lunchtimes and Wayne and I became fast friends. After a while he and his wife, Carole, would come over to stay with me and my wife, and she ended up being Godmother to my second daughter, Hannah.

Of course, being contractors, we parted ways at the end of the project but stayed in touch and even worked together again a couple of years later, when Wayne and Carole had their daughter around the time we had Izzy. The friendship was still strong and became stronger.

And then Wayne moved back to Canada. He took Carole and their daughter with him, as you might expect, but also Carole's parents. And the years went by. Many years. We hooked up a couple of times when they popped over but the last time was a long time ago.

But now their daughter is eighteen and coming to study in the UK, so Wayne and Carole brought her over this week to settle her in and yesterday I met them for breakfast at Frankie and Benny's. Man, it was great to see them. We chatted, laughed, drank coffee, Wayne mentioned me lying at the interview, of course, and we ended up staying much longer than we'd planned. It was everything I hoped it would be and thus rather painful saying goodbye, not knowing when I might see them again.

This photo isn't of Wayne and Carole but of the cup of coffee I drank while I was waiting for them (it transpires they are still always late). I tried the aperture priority thing again, putting items in the foreground and background to try and get this depth of field thing happening but all the photos looked the same again. What am I doing wrong?