Seán Moncrieff: A holiday with four men I’ve known since childhood means story after story after story

A friend told us a story. He was driving a long distance when he was gripped by a sudden and intense need to pee. But he was familiar with the route and knew he’d make it to the next service station.

He parked and headed straight to the toilet. Just as he shut the door, the ceiling collapsed on top of him.

That sounds serious, and it was, but miraculously, he was unharmed. Instead, he was standing in a toilet covered in chunks of plaster and pieces of metal. It was everywhere.

But he still needed to pee.

Seán Moncrieff: What does the word ‘woke’ really mean?

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Seán Moncrieff: As dull as it is, queuing isn’t just a cultural habit – it says something about society

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Seán Moncrieff: Psoriasis is one of the flaws that make me who I am

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Seán Moncrieff: To the British, the Irish aren’t really foreign

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[ Seán Moncrieff: You’ll never hear a straight man say: wow, those jeans fit you well ]

So, he pulled a piece of a light fitting out of the bowl, relieved himself, flushed, and then put the light fitting back in the toilet. Only then did he proceed to inform the understandably horrified staff that their toilet had come close to killing a customer. It seemed to make sense at the time.

This story was told in France. Four of us. Men I have known since we were children. We meet up a few times a year, usually in a Dublin pub, where we inevitably have a long and often impractical debate about going away on a weekend together. We consider locations and events we might attend, because we have done this kind of thing before. But it had been a while since the last one. 2011.

We finally managed it a few weeks ago, anchoring the trip around a performance by the Icelandic band Sigur Rós in a Roman amphitheatre in the city of Nîmes: which was as hipstergasmically atmospheric and pretentious as you might imagine. We enjoyed it for both those reasons. And because they served jugs of rosé.

The story is not over yet, though of course it will change. Inevitable mortality will arrive for one of us, and when that does, I wonder how that will affect those who remain

Of course, the event wasn’t that important. It was an excuse to hang out together for a few nights, to notice how we all groan now when we stand up or sit down, and to tell each other stories.

There were dozens of them, many of which I can’t remember; some of which, for legal and reputational reasons, I would never commit to print. Some were hilarious, some humdrum, some tragic, connecting one from the other into the various parts of our lives. Stories about our kids, our partners, other friends, our jobs.

The story about the toilet collapse had followed a story about having to re-order a car insurance cert because a bird, with startling accuracy, had managed to crap on it just as my friend was about to put it in his car. We talked about penalty points, about driving off from garages with the petrol nozzle still stuck in the car.

[ Seán Moncrieff: It’s fun to speculate but we haven’t a clue what our kids will become ]

I don’t want to get all Sally Rooney about it, but these were stories within a story: the tale of our continuing friendship. For decades, we have lived in different counties and continents. Our individual narratives have branched out dramatically from each other’s. As people do, we have all changed. Yet there is something fundamental about the connection we have, something we don’t quite understand, nor do we particularly need to. We’ve talked about it a bit, but not too much. We’re not, I like to think, the emotionally constipated variety of men. But you can talk some things to death.

The story is not over yet, though of course it will change. Inevitable mortality will arrive for one of us, and when that does, I wonder how that will affect those who remain. When there’s three left, or two, how will that change the story? Or will it be a completely different one?

I like to think it will be the same story, because even those who are gone will remain as characters, if slightly off-stage: because the others will continue to talk about them. Each of us is a story; and our story only ends when others stop telling it.