Dear Agnes, Maggie, Sofia, Mike, Emily, Damien, Evan, Sam, Colin, Gina, Andy, Lauren, Caroline, Phil, Dan, Josh, Anna, Brooke, Stephen, Siobhan, Peter, Sarah, Oskar and more.
Thanks for letting an old fart like me into your world and treating me as an equal. It’s such a pleasure to learn about your world – which is so different from mine – and to be able to ask you challenging questions and get challenging answers back! Being included energises me to be included. Learning and understanding about things and situations you know little about is exciting, thought-provoking. You keep me young.

I’m not confident about your world, how it works, what the terms mean, what the jargon is. You talk so fast, jump from term to term, joke to joke, situation to situation, which you all understand, while I flail along behind, smiling and trying to retain some of the information for possible future use.
I’m always shy around young people, fearing my interest om your lives will be misinterpreted, my contribution dull. But I’ve been around business and organisations and research all my working life, so I feel I have something to contribute, even though you – often – don’t seem to find it all that relevant.
I must admit, you women are quite beautiful. It is lovely to be an older man in the company of a beautiful young woman, but I hope I treat you as an equal, not an object of desire. It’s great too to see athletic bodies (men and women) raring to go – I loved my life of sport. It’s fascinating too to be around those of you who are succeeding in your work environments, doing interesting or different things, or coping with complexities I never had to deal with. Egotistically, I do think I’ve been able to help quite a few of you in different, and important, ways that helped you make good life decisions.
Most of you I see rarely, because you are overseas, a product of my own travels and friendship networks. But I’m confident that, when we do meet, our relationship will resume where it left off. A few of you have stayed with or visited us. You’ll always be welcome, so please feel free to ask.
So this is just to thank you all for being friends with me. I’m privileged to know you and be a very small part of your world. Hope to catch up with you soon.