Read Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play for Free Online Page B

the game.
    “Bye,” I mumbled. And I switched the Xbox off. Bloody Bald Assassin. Outside, the sky had darkened, and a dull gray light
     had overtaken the city. Small specks of rain had started to fall, forcing London into a hush as workers and tourists and everyone
     else stopped hurrying about and just stayed where they were instead. Soon the rain became heavier and the trees outside took
     the brunt, whole branches waving at me as the shower became a storm.
    I thought about switching the Xbox on again, but the place was a state and there were still all those boxes to unpack. And
     so, with a sigh, I walked to the spare room where most of them lay. I found some scissors and opened a box at random. DVDs.
     Ah well. That was easy. I’d sort them later. I opened another. Paperwork. Well, that would require filing expertise, and somewhere
     to file them all. Later.
    And then I saw a third box. Smaller than the others, but still rather large. Especially if you had to carry it home from the
     post office, like I’d done.
    The box from my parents.
    Intrigued—and because I still had a pair of scissors in my hands—I sliced through the parcel tape and flipped back the lid.
    And what I saw confused me for a second.
    There were letters. And videos. And photographs. And, more than anything…
memories.
It appeared to contain the contents of my childhood. A few schoolbooks, the scrapbook I’d kept when I was ten (when I’d wittily
     whited out the “S” to turn it into a crapbook), and letter after letter after letter.
    I smiled, and laughed, and started to pick through the stuff. I found badges, first: an
I AM
7 badge. A Tufty Club badge. My Dennis the Menace Fan Club badge. And then certificates: my Silver Cycling Proficiency certificate,
     which took me straight back to the playground at Holywell Junior School and the day we took the test. I’d done it on my brand
     new off-white Raleigh Renegade, and passed with flying colors… mainly because all you had to be able to do to gain your Silver
     was not fall off. Mind you, it can’t have been
that
easy. Ian Holmes failed, and
he’d
arrived on a tricycle.
    And here… here was another one. Another something I hadn’t seen in
years
… my FIRST PLACE certificate in the North Leicestershire Schools Swimming Association Under-Tens Boys Breaststroke competition.
     First place! I remembered how proud I’d been. You probably remember the day yourself, because it was all
anyone
on my street was talking about, so as you’ll know, that was the day I became the fastest nine-year-old in Leicestershire!
     Well, in
north
Leicestershire. At breaststroke.
    But they were just
details.
The 18th of March 1986 was the day I became a
winner!
Yeah, so it probably remains the only race I have ever won in my life, on land, sea or air, but I thought back to the magical
     day I’d had to stand up in school assembly to accept my certificate, an experience marred only by the fact that someone official
     had gotten my name wrong, and when I looked at it, it did not read DANIEL WALLACE, but P. WALLS instead. This offended me
     as much as a
speller
as it did as a winner. They hadn’t even given me a new certificate. Just stuck a small white sticker over the front and written
     my proper name in black ink. They wouldn’t have done that at the Olympics, so why they should do it at Holywell Junior School
     is anyone’s guess.
    I dug deep into the box and pulled out more stuff. A sticker with a footballer on it. Some copies of
Fast Forward
magazine. And photos—dozens of old photos. Photos of me as a kid. Photos of me with my friends. Photos of where we lived,
     and what we did, and of all the fun we had.
    I spread everything out on the floor, and started to pick through it, so much of it firing off memories and triggering thoughts
     I hadn’t had in decades. Here was a picture of me dressed as a tiny soldier, in the days where all I’d wanted was to be a
     stuntman like Lee Majors and have