Dear LPG Readers,  

It is funny how our friends change over the years.   

Firstly, there are the school friends that you had when you were really young.   

The other day I received a video call from my oldest friend, and it was good to talk.  She lives some 50 miles away now, and we don’t see each other  (in reality or with the help of technology) very often.  Our chats were once much more frequent, but there has also been the odd year when a birthday or Christmas card was our only communication.  

Now that we are both retired, we usually share a more in-depth catch-up chat perhaps every two months although the odd crisis often gets us communicating a little more often than that. That is enough to keep up with the ups and downs of what is going on in each other’s lives.  people often criticise our calls for being far too long but she is the friend that I don’t call unless I have an hour to spend on catching up. 

We are now both well and truly retired but we still find our lives hectic.  Our conversations bring us up to date with what our children are doing and while there is a degree of chat about what education and vocational milestones they have achieved and any health issues they are facing,  we still swap information about the small personal things that happen in their everyday lives.  Perhaps you qualify as best friends when you also chat about those things that have not gone quite right since you last spoke, the state of the garden, and an update on the failed decoration project that is ongoing. 

We both now live with people that we care for and, while those people can provide the subject matter for some of the more negative sections of the conversation, there is such a lot of humour in the little things that happen on a day-to-day basis which are also important to swap notes about.  I think that we do our best to make sure that we keep what is going on as positive as possible.   

She opted for the life of a teacher over the years, while I have done so many different jobs.  We all know that in life and at work, things inevitably go wrong, and while the challenges of our differing jobs have been many and varied, we each confide in each other when the crises crop up.   We always seem to be there to provide a sounding board and an advisor for each other.  

I mention all this because I took a look at what the internet thinks makes a best friend or at least a good one.   

An American professor has deduced that it takes at least 200 hours to make a good friend. (I think that we qualify there) but some British research tells that there is an 11 3 6 rule to be taken into consideration.  I quote: ‘The "11-3-6" rule of friendship suggests that it takes approximately 11 interactions, each lasting about 3 hours, over a period of 6 months to turn an acquaintance into a true friend.’    

While it can be argued that science tells some of the story, I always think that statistics tend to have a bearing too, and I have found some.  Although what I found is about five years old now, I think that the saddest aspect was the fact that, according to  YouGov, ‘Three in ten people (28%) say they do not have a ‘best friend’, with this being the case more for men (31%) than women (26%). 

I think that I decided to write this down to remind me and also all the other LPG readers that even though people have tried to provide either statistics or  a formula for just about everything including a criteria for working out who your best friend might be, there are some things that just can’t be measured scientifically, but if you have neglected your best friend a bit lately I hope my message serves to remind you to at least give them a call…  

EK, Crofton Park

 

EK shares some of what she found on line…

 

(►►►)      (►►►)