On friendship and a sense of things repeating themselves.

It’s funny how things come around.

Teenagers have been expressing their opinions about why they watch the old series “Friends”. Manybof the youngsters who now seek out “Friends” to watch were not even born when the final series came to an end. And yet that fictional friendship lives on.

One of them, aged 13, said, “I love how they try to always work things out. It gives us all hope that everything will work out. In real life, friendships don’t happen like they do in Friends and neither do relationships, but I think everyone who watches it wishes they did. I also think people love the idea of always having someone to talk to and share things with.”

Oddly enough, we know people of our generation, including ourselves, who have groups of friends who still meet up regularly. Our daughter has bunch of friends, mostly girls when went to school with, who call on each other for emotional support from time to time. And our son’s set of friends is perhaps more like the fictional bunch. They were thrown together as residents of their floor in a hall of residence at university. They rented a house together in later years of their university time. Then they moved to London en masse, touting their cvs around agencies as they looked for work. Almost two decades on they are mostly still in touch. Four of them went to Madrid for a music festival to celebrate my son’s fortieth birthday last summer.

Maybe today’s teenagers spend so much time on their electronic devices that they don’t form properly the actual physical friendships of earlier generations.

Our children’s children become sort of friends as they get together for offsprings’ birthday parties. Can these develop into true friendship? Only time will tell. To what extent do parents choose friends for their children anyway? My experience is that the friendships our children established spontaneously, as it were, through school, university and work have been more lasting. Although nowadays work does not seem to give much time for making friends!

Yesterday, in response to I am not sure I remember what conversational stimulus, I came out with the old expression: “If at first you don’t succeed, try again at greater speed!!” My travelling companion friend had never heard this expression. What a surprise.

I have decided that Mrs May is following the philosophy of that dictum. This is what I found on a BBC news site: “MPs may not be given a vote on a revised version of Theresa May's Brexit deal this month, a minister has said. Communities Secretary James Brokenshire said there might more non-binding votes on Brexit alternatives instead. The prime minister has to get an agreement with the EU passed by MPs by 29 March to avoid a no-deal Brexit. She will ask MPs for more time to get changes to the deal in talks with Brussels - but Labour has accused her of "cynically" running down the clock.”

I’m getting a sad sense of déja vu!