It was when I woke up in a sleeping-bag on the filthy living-room floor of a grotty Brixton flat that I decided I wasn’t the reunion type.

It was meant to be a fun gathering, organised by some people I’d been to journalism college with, but it felt forced and awkward. With little in common other than tired anecdotes and petty tensions, we’d outgrown each other.

The idea of reunions is quite romantic. They have inspired films and TV dramas, from The Big Chill and Peter’s Friends to This Life. But in reality they can be dismal, and for years I’ve tried to avoid them.

So when I recently received a card from an old friend with the words ‘Are we on for September?’ scrawled on it, I felt uneasy. Our university is holding a reunion – but I didn’t think any of us would actually go.

Back when we were students, we’d brace ourselves for the annual ‘old boys weekend’ which involved drunken middle-aged blokes descending on their old haunts to play sports and guzzle beer.

They’d been students before we were even born, and to us they were just ageing saddos with middle-age spread and mortgages, trying to re-capture their youth. With the arrogance of youth – and the pompous self-righteousness of students – we viewed them with amusement, contempt and pity.

Of course, it didn’t stop us from organising our own reunions once we too had moved on to the real world. For a few years after graduation, I regularly met up with college friends, but because we were still in our 20s, it didn’t feel quite as sad or desperate as it had when the ‘old boys’ invaded.

Middle-age and mortgages were a long way off, and whenever we returned to our old student stomping ground for a get-together, it felt like we still had a right to be there. We were young and could hit the Nelson Mandela bar, dancing to New Order and clutching plastic pint glasses, without looking out of place.

But that was a long time ago. The thought of a reunion two decades later is enough to bring out a stress rash.

As students, we spent hours hanging out in each others’ rooms, drinking tea and making vague, dreamy plans for a future none of us really wanted to think about. There’s something scary about going back to face the ghosts of who we once were.

But, strangely, it’s also quite exciting. Maybe, like those rowdy old boys I once sneered at, I’m at an age when I just don’t care. Bring on the plastic pint glasses and the Blue Monday mega-mix!