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To begin with, going back takes all manner of forms and covers a multitude of emotions. There's nostalgia for one. The soft focus lens, fluffy-round-the-edges memories of how it used to be. Conveniently forgotten are the dreadful damp Tuesday afternoons or the roasting hot, non-air-conditioned summer days or the aggravations of Mrs Ahmed's never ending dentures saga. Instead we remember the good times, the happy times and yes, even some of the bad times were good times because you were part of such a wonderful team who all pulled together. Ah, the instant uptake of the rose-tinted retrospecter scope.

Then curiosity muscles in. The nosey to find out what happened to the people you left behind and how they could have possibly managed without you. I wonder what happened to so-and-so? It would be fascinating to know if whatshername ever did manage to do such-and-such. Did that hygienist with the big hair and the rollerblades ever marry that plumber called Wayne?

This jumble of feelings combines with a nervousness when actually returning to a former workplace. Things that are just as they were reinforce the ‘when we’ memories. ‘Oh, seeing that X-ray unit against the wall reminds me of when we...’ and the listener, if you're watching them carefully, as you never are because the enthusiasm for telling the tale overwhelms your usual sensitivity to the tedium you might be creating, smiles a grin of politeness and glazes over, probably going into their personal store of ‘when we’ stories to blunt the boredom.

But, horror of horrors, the reception area that you spent agonising meetings designing, discussing, re-designing and re-discussing before suffering months of builder's dust and disruption, has been swept away and merged with a crèche and preventive dental unit. Well, if they're happy... However, with a pang of great if guilt-ridden self-satisfaction you note that the leaky window frame in the rear surgery about which you complained repeatedly still has a small drip tray underneath it with its familiar, resident pool of slightly stained water.

Did that hygienist with the big hair and the rollerblades ever marry that plumber called Wayne?

Sometimes you go back and there's nothing there at all or it's changed so radically that you can't exactly find it. A vague recollection of the road layout guides your route until the growing confidence of lost familiarity ceases abruptly at the end of Roman Street. Where the estate agent's was on the corner there is now a leisure complex and car park. The hospital has been sold off and converted into luxury fully fitted apartments with ‘original features’, wooden flooring and views over a marina that occupies what used to be the mortuary and boiler block. The premises have reverted to a residential dwelling, become a coffee chain shop or a charity outlet. The world of going back is now only in your memory, no-one on the street, no-one viewing the ducks on the marina from their cosy duplex, no-one buying a second hand hat will have any idea that you used to sterilise instruments on that very spot. Or, frankly, be in the least bit interested.

Not that it is just the physical surroundings that make you want to retrace your steps. The people were the central part of your existence there, colleagues and patients in whose daily trials and tribulations you shared. What of them? The leaving party when you all swore to keep in touch? Not like all the other previous times when such promises had led to nothing; no, this was different. Well of course with busy lives and not having that particular practice in common anymore and moving away and then the family coming along and ... it turns out that the only person still there is the receptionist who you didn't especially get on with anyway and who has obviously confused you with someone else.

But the patients, what of them? Those who were so sorry to hear that you were leaving that they sent in a sack load of good luck cards. In the waiting room you recognise at least two of your old regulars, each of whom eyes you suspiciously before one of them says, ‘aren't you the girl who used to run the bingo sessions at the Day Centre?’

Never say never, but never go back unless you really have to.