Dear LPG,

I think that, no matter your age, friendships come and go, and somehow we seem to find ourselves in social groups that we just sort of become a part of.   We start out with the friends at school, college, work and now, I have a group of friends that all met at one of the lunch clubs that I attend (I mean attended weekly before UK lock-down), and some of those friends become special, but I think that one thing is constant as we go through life and that is that each of us become a part of new friendship groups and when you are with your group of friends, members of those groups take on specific roles within the group. 

Ever since I can remember, whether at school, college or work, those friendship groups always appear to find a leader.  There is also the one that is impressed by everything, the one that always offers what everyone else in the group thinks is useless information, the group member that is always positive, the one that always makes the others really think about the serious issues of life and the one that always lifts everyone’s spirits with a joke or something funny to tell. 

But then came lock down and we were encouraged to talk to each other on the phone, while we found ourselves isolated.  At first I found myself following the media advice and trying to be positive when talking but you can only do that for so long.  As the time went on and I found myself talking to those people it is interesting how much more I learned about some of those group members.  I spent time talking to them without the other members of the group of friends around and it was so much easier to really talk about things that would never have come up in a group conversation. 

It is very hard to remain acquaintances when you spend a lot of time talking to friends that you would usually talk to in a group around a lunch table.  I am sure that all the members of our group have learned so much more about each other and I cannot help but wonder how different our lunch group will be the next time we are all able to get together.

OK, Lee