I always struggled with friendships, creating them and maintaining them. To understand someone who understands you back, sounds easy in principle but it takes time and times to get to know someone. A mutual effort undertaken willingly with no motive other than a want for company. Maybe, but it’s a minefield of subtlety, body language, social and self awareness as well, most of which we are expected to have picked up from learning and experience. I moved a lot as a child and didn’t ever really gets to grips with repeatedly having to meet new people and make ‘friends’. It’s forced upon children that they must socialise and it’s been a cringing experience in childhood and for me ever since. But I understand the value of it.

It’s nice to have compadres and partner in crime, there have been a couple over the years but they have now drifted off to have lives that don’t include someone so anti-social, which I don’t actually mind, I’m grateful for the fun times that were had. But now it’s different for me too because in my husband I have the best friend I ever could have hoped for and realise there was only ever meant to be one person I shared everything with…