THERE was something very familiar about the man engrossed in his newspaper, sitting opposite me on the tube one evening this week.

Ileant across. "Excuse me, but didn't we used to be married?" I asked.

Well, it has been a longish time, probably around five years, since I last saw that face, a face I once woke up to every morning on the pillow next to mine.

It's not that we had an acrimonious divorce, and anyway it was all so long ago that had it been a matrimonial bloodbath, good old time would surely have healed all wounds by now.

No, we haven't seen each other because the one interest we still had in common, our son, is now all grown-up and no longer in need of joint parental guidance (interference) in his life. So the ex and I, all passion long since spent, have simply exited from each other's lives.

Which, when you think about it, as I did later that evening, is sort of sad. How can two people who once shared the same toothpaste, borrowed each other's socks (well, I borrowed his) and fought over their rightful share of the duvet, now barely recognise each other as their paths cross on public transport?

Coincidentally, it was also on the underground a couple of years ago, that I met an ex-boyfriend who once turned my legs - and brain- to jelly.

For him I became a waiter - I waited by the phone, outside cinemas, inside pubs. He was young, slim, strikingly attractive and rich-ish, all eminently marketable qualities. What a catch....

As the only things I ever seem to catch are colds, he slipped the net which, though I didn't appreciate it at the time, was a very lucky escape. For me.

Icertainly recognised how kind the fates had been when a portly, balding gent with a sprinkling of dandruff and awfully bad breath, called my name and lurched affectionately against me on the Victoria line. It was He Who Had Broken My Heart - and age had not been good to him. Age in fact, had been a bitch.

Fortunately, he got off at the next stop, just after I told him that I was now married to a large, and very possessive, second husband who still played rugby at weekends. Well, if you're going to lie, you might as well make it a big one.

In my opinion, allowing the past to catch up with you is never, ever, a good idea. Keep on running is my advice. And why reunions (of old schoolfriends, workmates etc) should be so popular, baffles me.

Some years ago I foolishly attended a school reunion in Yorkshire and met up with a woman who had been my Best Friend from primary school to sixth form.

Oh, what an excellent memory she had. Things I'd done, said and long since forgotten (and with good reason), were described in the minutest, and goriest, detail in the pub afterwards.

But she did get a bit confused. I'm still not certain it really was me who did something disgusting on the school bus with a brown paper bag and a tin of mixed vegetable salad in mayonnaise.

Which reminds me. The ex-hub and I have agreed to have lunch together at some unspecified date in the future. Better not leave it for another five years, though, otherwise I doubt I would recognise him next time.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.