The last month or so has been, in part, a wonderful walk down memory lane. Thanks to being quite dazzlingly old now, 40th birthday parties are serving as wonderful catalysts for catch-ups, and excuses for evenings out.

In our relative youth we are blessed with the ability and fortitude to venture out frequently, while of course encroaching years mean changed priorities, and changed days. From 21st birthdays the segway to 30th seemed imperceptible, followed by weddings and celebrations to welcome the next generation sent to replace us.

The opportunity to see school-mates, peer-groups and uni friends seem all too infrequent. That said, it is entirely apt that one should, relatively speaking, see people less as our time is spoken for by the most interesting people we could have ever hoped to meet.

I had a great excuse to catch up with one of my oldest friends for his in London, which was a suitable extravaganza. One of the highlights, save for time with him and a few of those who have known me the longest (and the fact of a wonderful romance between two dear friends), was seeing his family- mother, elder brother and sister, with whom I spent many a happy time in my formative years.

There is something lovely in seeing those you have known for so long, and of course with this comes the realisation that we are now the next group tasked with raising a generation. Mercifully, it is worth remembering that we have a lot of help.

Amongst all this self-congratulation, a rare treat was having a best friend back home on holiday from living abroad and spending time with my kids. The first pleasant discovery was that his borderline tourette’s has mercifully waned, especially as any indiscretions can be repeated ad nauseam thanks to Oran and Lula’s age. Tellingly, he still remembers my OCD way to lock a door, and is one of three people tops who can actually read my handwriting, thanks to classroom necessity long passed.

One of my favourite comments in recent years (save for one of the most prescient) was from a school friend when I informed him that we were expecting youth number 2- the now baby criminal. In an off-the-cuff, understated manner he simply said- ‘Brilliant- another one to grow up with ours.’ The simplicity of such a thought and the beauty of an extended group of various ages is genuinely a profound thing.

Part of this extended, multi-generational love-in is contingent upon geography and, arguably, indolence, in that I now live again in the city of my birth. Those who live elsewhere replicate those networks and create their own, which makes them just as profound and magical in my opinion, as the number of unofficial aunts and uncles our kids inherit or collect attest to.

Like with our kids, we should be in part unable or unwilling to acknowledge the flaws our nearest and dearest, like the rest of humanity have in spades. Our children are finding their way, and definining themselves in part through their friendships. Friends old and new remind us to embrace the idiosincracies, and intimacies which define so much of us. They are a force of wonder in our lives and, regardless of frequency of contact, can be in that of our children.

When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy–that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.- Mark Twain