This post was inspired by a Tweet on this subject matter. What a topic to explore. Naturally I can’t cover everything I’d like to say. For example people’s definition of friends and friendship may vary with age. Different generations can see common subjects very differently. Then of course there’s the still ongoing debate about whether online friendships are comparable to those in the real world. And there’s also the common experience that age impacts heavily upon our social circles. People get jobs, settle down into relationships and have families. In today’s modern world there are now numerous different permutations of this but the net result is the same. There comes a point where through no fault of your own, you can find yourself without a circle of close friends, like you had as a teenager. This then raises the issue of what do you do if you’d like to do more socialising and meet more people. Because often in later life, a lot of the traditional places and opportunities to meet people, such as work or school, are no longer available. And then there is another matter that some people such as myself face, which is my own “particular” nature. Simply having a pulse and the ability to form a sentence does not necessarily guarantee you being my next bosom buddy.