Reunion – by Tom Myers
An unexpected evening completed my tour of the Caribbean here in Barbados.
First, I very cautiously stepped into the cone of light my host Christy had set up for me:
Not an evening with Tom Myers, which I could have handled easily, but an evening about Tom Myers, which was much more vulnerable and heartfelt. Christy gently and deftly teased out the phases of my life and career Very uncomfortable but revealing and different from the usual. Someone made a recording so we may put this autobiographical piece out later.
But second, this photo. Andrea, on the far right, still producing films from here, was my client in London in 1981 – some 40+ years ago. She introduced Prue – she’s in blue – and Prue became the first (but not the last) person in Europe whom I persuaded to take bodywork up as a career. She’s still working now, in her 80’s. Because it’s fun.

Prue has long been connected with Barbados, so she made the runnin’ down here for a visit at the same time as me. Again, a 40+ year intense relationship, watching each other take on partners, children, life – until we lost physical touch over Covid. It took several hours of chin-wag for us to get current. So full in my heart to see her again. I don’t get to my old home in UK much any more, and Prue lives down by the coast, so we just hadn’t seen each other for way too long.
Yours truly in the middle there, but on the left, and highly ‘coincidental’, was that my oldest friend and collaborator on media, Michael Frenchman, was doing a bit of writing and research and came to Barbados to do it. We happened to message, and – quel surprise – his place was a few hundred yards from where this talk was being held.
Michael directed my first ventures into video back in 1998, and we collaborated on many programmes over the ensuing 10 years. Our friendship started in 1968 on the barricades of the anti-Vietnam war movement, and continued through the Buckminster Fuller phase, where Michael was my mentor. That’s a 50-year arc of friendship. Not always easy, but hang on to people like this, even when you’re estranged or it’s difficult – You can’t make new old friends!
So I got to review my life in a very sweet way with two very old and dear friends from different phases of it. Thank you, friends, for showing up, however God got you there. Thank you Christy, for conceiving of the evening and making it possible. Thanks to Roxy, who snapped the picture and generously celebrates the joys we older people find in reunion.
1/31/25