Friends for all weather

Iused to think I had enough friends. I’d joke that I had no vacancies for friends, particularly ones who were gluten-intolerant, teetotal, or used American spellings.

I love my friends, and there are only so many hours in a day.

But you know who I’ve learned to love too? The friends I haven’t met yet.

Sometimes I think about the friends I haven’t met and I smile, because I know the world is full of them.

For instance, last year I started doing a part-time art diploma at night school, and just like that I gained 14 new friends.

It took a while to get to know them all – nine months, like childbirth – but most of them were at my house on Saturday for a little party.

This clutch of new friends range in age from 26 to 58, they are from ten different countries – Mexico to Slovakia, Argentina to India – and they brought plates of food from around the world, and we drank gin-and-tonics in the afternoon sunshine.

Everyone finally went home after midnight, by which time we all had henna-patterned hands, potential diabetes, goofy photographs, and I’d discovered my exact birthday “twin” who happens to be from Poland.

So yes, I smile again at the seemingly endless possibilities to forge new friendships, however fleeting or frivolous they may be.

Gradually I’ve learned that not every friend needs to be what my mum would call “a bosom buddy,” or high maintenance, or a friend for life, because a friend in the moment is a moment well spent.

Some friends are essential, some are seasonal, but all are precious.

Better yet, the world is crammed full of people, 7.9 billion of them, although I can probably rule out the 2.6 billion under-20s as pals, which gives me 5.3 billion people to choose from.

I’m pretty sure I’d actively enjoy at least half of these, or a quarter if I was feeling cynical, so that leaves 1.325 billion friendsin-waiting.

If I die at 90, I have 40 years of potential new friendships left.

It’s a glorious feeling, knowing the world is full of friends new, old, and ones you haven’t met yet.

I couldn’t say it better that WB Yeats: “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.”