And so we enter a new era.

The Adver has new offices, and on the very day that it was running an extended story about the historic move (last Thursday), a reunion of former staff was taking place, attended by yours truly.

It is only the second reunion I’ve ever been to, and my memory of the first is sketchy.

It was a school reunion, in a pub, more than 20 years ago, and the organisers thought it would be a good idea to base it around a disco.

They hadn’t reckoned on most of us wanting to chat to people we hadn’t seen for 20 years, rather than dance, and all I can remember about the event itself was trying to make ourselves heard above The Bee Gees.

So we ended up drinking more than we should have, and when it got to closing time I was fortunate that I only had a five minute walk home, even though, that night, it probably took me 15.

What I most remember was the look of relief on my wife’s face when I walked in the door.

During the evening our cat had brought a live mouse into the living room and released it, so I was given the task of catching and liberating it.

But I was in no state to chase mice.

Even the next day, when I had sobered, it was so tiny that we could hardly see it, and even after bringing in my father-in-law as reinforcements, the damned thing took an hour to catch.

Things were a lot more civilised at the Adver reunion last Thursday, and thankfully there were no Bee Gees, just the dilemma of such events: wondering whether you will recognise and remember people, years down the line.

I have a problem with identifying people anyway, which goes far beyond the common-all-garden complaint of not being able to put names to faces, and another complication is how the Adver operation used to be structured.

There were broadly three departments, each on a separate floor: the advertising people, who actually brought in most of the income; the reporters, sub-editors and photographers, who compiled the paper; and the production staff, who got it on and off the presses.

While I got to know all the people in my third of the operation, plus a few others by name, the rest were a lot of names you heard and faces you saw but never quite connected up.

The reunion was more or less the same, with some being instantly recognisable and nameable, while other names and faces were pennies that dropped more slowly.

And sometimes not at all.

This was because the organisers had done well to get the word around, and some of the people there had left before I started in 1989.

A surprise bonus was that I was one of the youngest in the room, which isn’t often the case these days, but that wasn’t the only reason for enjoying it.

The reunion confirmed something I always said about the people who were employed on this paper, although I have never been able to work out whether the same applies to all local newspapers or just ours.

Basically, they were - with only one or two exceptions - lovely people.

Lovely to work with and work for, and almost like a family.

Better still: the reunion showed them to still be lovely, and happy too.

I think most of them realised they were lucky to have worked in such an interesting industry, and with people who shared their affection for it.

And they shared something even better: they were grateful to have been part of it.

As am I.