How many times have you wondered what happened to your old school friends? Have you ever wished you were still in touch?

This may be a good time to track down a few old mates and catch up on the news.

Last week, I went to a school reunion in Seaford and met up with people I hadn't seen for 30 years.

We had a great evening and it was surprising to see how little people had changed over the years. All the blokes stood in one group and the girls stood in another.

Our reunion was organised in part, through Friends Reunited, a brilliant web site that has gone a long way towards bringing old friends together.

The internet has become such a large part of people's lives using a computer to trace your mates no longer seems like science fiction.

But that was only half the story.

Tracking down people you haven't seen for years can take ages unless you know a few dodges to speed up the process.

You need to know the online people-finders like www.1stlocate.

co.uk (a subsidiary of Friends Reunited)

and look at sites like www.reunite.co.uk and www.around.co.uk
Second World War veterans might like to try ww2.vet.org/recall1.html that offers a bulletin board for long lost comrades in arms. More recent armed forces folk should have a look at:

www.vimart.co.uk, which offers a free comrade-finding service.

My favourite site is www.192.com but it has a rather complicated way of making you pay for its services. You can pay £19.99 for 100 searches, subscribe to a search service for £14.95 a month or sign up to a sponsorship package that lets you use the service free.

Free in this instance is a relative term. Signing up to this kind of sponsorship package can lay you open to a deluge of advertising material.

I chose the one-time payment for 100 searches and found it excellent. You get a lot more information from 192.com than from directory inquiries and the level of accuracy is surprisingly good.

For those people who would love to go to a school reunion but have lost contact with all their old friends (or maybe for those with a huge ego) a relatively new site called who-me.com lets you check if anyone is looking for you.

If online searching doesn't throw up an old friend or two, take a walk down to your local council offices and ask to look at the electoral roll.

This is a list of everyone who lives in your area. You might be surprised at the number of former friends who still live locally.

Another way is to contact The Argus and put an advertisement in the personal columns.

This can work really well if you have moved away from your childhood home and find it difficult to return to carry out a personal search.

Our reunion was a very happy experience.

It was lovely to see so many old friends and renew acquaintance.

If you haven't done it yet, why not log on to the internet, check out the directories and start the ball rolling.

You never know who you might find.