Dear LPG, 

I suspect that you have had other readers send similar messages to the one I am going to offer today, but I was looking at the internet and came across one of those celebration days that I felt needed to be marked. 

I hope that LPG have put this message on their website on July 30th which is the International Day of Friendship.  

There are many types of friends.  I have no doubt that many readers of this message will be grandparents who watch their little ones with their best friends who can become their worst enemy with the snatch of a toy.   In my experience, as we get older best friends often become enemies overnight although the snatched toy, turns into the coveted boy or girlfriend, the borrowed item which never gets returned, the upsetting comment and so many such things, although I want to talk about a different kind of friendship today. 

Over the years we older people have been through so many friends.

Did you know that the average person changes jobs about six times during a lifetime and moves house about seven times, depending on which set of facts you believe when you look on the internet?  When you add the schools and colleges you went to and the holidays you have been on, you will find that you have also moved through a lot of other friends during your lifetime too.  During lockdown, I think many of us might have spent time looking through old papers and boxes and I know that I found a few old address books. With all that time on our hands I also suspect that many have dusted a few of those old numbers off and picked up the phone only to find that a few of those numbers have not changed.  Conversations with friends we lost touch with decades ago can be a magical way of remembering.

But now that we can get out again all those promises to keep in touch have been superseded by the preoccupations that stopped us from making the effort to keep in touch before it all started. 

So, I would like to remind you of your lockdown promises to stay in touch that were most probably the last sentence of a long reminiscent conversation on this National Friendship Day and suggest that we make a list of those lost and found friends you promised to stay in touch with and try to catch up with at least one of them per month.  

When we get to our age we are liable to lose enough friends for other reasons without losing touch with the ones that are still around.

Keep in touch. Good friends become a rare commodity as we get older. 

PY, Penge.

LPG found some information…

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