Groucho Marx-itis or deeper psychosis?

Something I perennially associate with America is the High School Reunion. We don’t have them in England as far as I know.

This might be because we don’t have High Schools but it could just as well be because we don’t have reunions.

Or maybe I am wrong, we do have them but I never get invited.

Until now that is.

30 years ago I was invited, with my then-partner John, to perform opposite the about-to-be–opened Covent Garden Market in London, on the very spot where Samuel Pepys first saw and recorded a performance of Punch and Judy. At the time the area was surrounded by corrugated iron as conversion works were carried out following the shifting of the once vibrant central fruit and vegetable market to the outskirts of industrial Wandsworth. The time when we were invited that is, not the time samuel.....

The area, plum (if not cabbage) in the centre of town was deserted and dead, and an organisation – Community Arts, run almost single handily by an explosion called Maggie - were trying to get things a bit livelier.

A number of performers were invited to do shows, at which Maggie would collect money from the audience to supplement the small fee she was able to pay us; she thus became, officially the first resident bottler – a term that may have had an origin in the custom of keeping a fly in the bottle that was used to collect the money and which the collector had prevent from escaping -thus proving to the performer that no money had been filched.

From this beginning a community of buskers grew up very quickly, once we realised the potential both of making a lot of money and more importantly testing and building a fledging show.

This month there is an event to celebrate the intervening years and among other things a reunion of performers is muted and a list of possible invitees has been circulated.

My name is on the list but perversely I am pleased to see that I am listed alongside “no contact address” – I like to maintain a certain distance from …..

…From what?

Why does the idea of meeting up with this group fill me with horror?

Is it a case of Groucho Marx-itis (I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members)?

Or are there deeper currants of psychosis at work?