Donkey Dung and Friends

I lost a friend yesterday.
Didn't give a toss, to be honest, on the day I announced the success of the work-from-Wales plan.

This, under any normal circumstances, would be a self-contradictory statement of course. But then again, in the days of social networking 'normal circumstances' as regards friendship have pretty much stopped applying.

As if to underline this fact, I'm (still!) reading Aristotle's Ethics, and His Nibs has just finished a dissertation on friendship. He breaks friends into categories - Intimate (Good) Friends, Advantageous Friends etc. He says it's probably a good idea to limit the Good Friends you have to a number to whom you can actually be a Good Friend, sympathising with their problems, rejoicing in their triumphs, sharing your mind with them, doing favours when you can etc etc.

I think, on some level, I do that. I have maybe a handful, maybe two, of what I'd call Good Friends - people I'm comfortable talking to on any day, people I know would be there if I was destitute and burbling, people who never take from me more than I have in terms of emotional resources, and who, more often than not, make me laugh and lift my life. Then there are people with whom I'm not "intimate" in Aristotle's terms - our lives don't thread in and out on a daily or even weekly basis, but every time we get together, or get in contact, we're comfortable as a good old coat. Some of these probably should be intimate friends of mine, but I'm not as good at spinning the plates of our lives as I could or should be.

I have friends abroad - some of whom - many of whom, in fact, I consider to be on a par with those old coat friends - I can't be in and out of their lives day to day, but if I can help in some way, I'm more than happy to do so.

And then, in this day and age, there are social network 'friends'; in my case Facebook friends. These friends multiply and cross pollinate like bacteria. Some of them, I've had enough contact with, and have enough daily contact with, to bump them up to satellite friends, but others...many, many others...are sadly little more than clicks on a page to me.

Yesterday, one of my abroad-old-coaters, Sarah, posted something and asked her friends to share it. It seemed a worthy cause to me, so I expended the slightest shred of energy, clicked a button, and passed it on, thinking of her and her family, feeling pleased to have seen something from her.

A Facebook friend flamed up and told me the thing I'd shared was wrong, and bullshit, and self-indulgent to boot, and that I should remove it. I told her she was missing the point, that I was sharing the thing because I'd been asked to by a friend, and saw nothing wrong in doing so. She told me I was a real jerk, and that I should have a good life and, at some point, learn to write, because my blog sucked all sorts of donkey dung. Then she de-friended me.

I guess the real lesson here is that if a friend is a Good friend, it'll matter when they leave your life. And if it doesn't, you were probably no friend to them, and they were probably no friend to you either, so all in all, you're probably better off without each other.

Just to underscore this is big thick red ink, a couple of other things happened today. My pal Sian - one of the oldest and most enduring of my friendships - was in London and we met for lunch. Before the lunch was over, my imminent move home had been unfolded in detail, and Sian had made plans to hire me a transit van from her town (where they're cheaper than in London), and to drive it to us, help pack it with boxes, drive us to Merthyr, help unpack the van, drive us back to London, and then drive herself home. She did this with no expectation, no thought of reward, nothing but the desire to help a friend. Despite Aristotle's insistence that we should accept offers of help from friends reluctantly, I thought 'screw it' and accepted like a shot.

Likewise, Karen "Pulley" - who dates in my life from the same period as Sian - made contact with d, and the two of them made plans to meet when we get to Merthyr and cook together. A spontaneous gesture of friendship and inclusion, of welcome to the Valleys, and a merging of two parts of my world that I love.

Those, ladies and gentlemen, are Good friends. I have a treasure-chest life, and although I only have maybe two handfuls of people of this calibre and vintage, every one of them, I know, wishes me - wishes us the best things we could hope for. That's worth more than a million Facebook flamers who make zero impact and who leave as unobtrusively as they arrived, or were.

Oh and incidentally, I'm not making the case here that she was wrong about the blog. I have no illusions that what I'm writing here is literary gold. I made the case right at the start that what it was was a diary, a motivator, and, as it's grown, a disciplinary aid. If I make some people laugh along the way, or think along the way, or even, as I've occasionally been told, inspire some people along the way, that's a bonus. Unlike d, I don't expect people to read this blog day in, day out. I'm happy if people pop in and out. But four stone some-odd down the line, this thing is still working as a motivation and a discipline aid. If you spot a big pile of donkey dung along the way, feel free to step around it and see what comes along tomorrow.

Wear sensible shoes. They'll help.

Blood was a tad high this morning - 6.3! Veins must be slapped about and duly chastised tomorrow...