| The five ages of friends |
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When we reach our teens, our friends are going through the same hormonal imbalance as us and so the same worries and insecurities. We discuss the opposite sex, although mainly in aspirational terms. Eventually we find a girl/boyfriend and our other friends become at least temporarily displaced by the new obsession. Friendships form and reform over the years. If we are in a relationship, our friends tend to be other couples. Particularly when we form permanent relationships, the angst of the singleton no longer sits well with us because we want to talk about the things that ‘we' have done. But things change. As often as not couples have children. Those taking this path lead a different form of life to those without and so friendships weaken and, in the case of those without children, new friendships are made, but less by reference to age and more by reference to lifestyle. Of course, the children eventually grow up and the parents profess relief at their ability to be free once more to live their lives as they wish. Not that it quite works out like that, as they seem to carry on providing for their children well beyond the time when you might expect them to have become self-sufficient. Ultimately they and the couples who never went through the cost and stress of children meet again and can talk about similar things once more. At least for a while, because parents in turn risk becoming grandparents and grandparents then start talking to their friends, not just about their own children whom they have probably met and could recognise, but grandchildren whom they've never met or only seen at the christening and whose names are only recognised because of the grandparents' unstinting praise for them. As a result, dinner parties which used to turn on the finer points of politics become occasions for descriptions of outings to Alton Towers or Drayton Manor Park, but with the benefit of reduced price entry for the grandparents because they are now pensioners. And finally, the grandchildren grow up and the friends become even older and start talking about their hospital appointments, hip replacements and arthritis. Having friends of all ages, we seem to see them living their various lives in slow motion at the same time, as a series of split screen images. We see in them our past and present, but also see what our future might become or perhaps what it might have been. |