The importance of friends

I have had moments recently of really needing my friends, both for practical things and for emotional support.  It has made me think about all the wonderful women in my life, and the different roles they play in my life.  Friendship is one of those funny things.  I have realised late in life that friendship, particulalry friendship with women, is extraordinarily important to me.  When I first lived in England I found it very hard to make friends with women and so entered a phase where most of my friends were blokes: Caspar, Eric, Alistair, Dameon, Bob, Ben... and some of them are still in my life and the lovely, gorgeous men folk they always were.  So there I was living in Chesham with Steve with my established (if small) network of friends and then we moved!  All the way to the top of England, to Newcastle upon Tyne, a place about which I knew nothing, and nobody.  It was okay to begin with, I had some money saved and decided to take a month off before I started looking for work.  A chance to explore the city and get to know something about it.  We were living in a rented flat on the Quayside, which was a fantastic place to live, right in the middle of the thriving Newcastle nightlife.  I loved the city and the Gothamesque narrow twisty steps, dingy back lanes and architecture.  I found the geordies very friendly and welcoming, but very hard to get close to.  When I started looking for work, I was surprised to discover that my many talents where NOT in demand!  There were no employers beating a path to my door.  I rang up, I sent out CVs, I scoured newspapers and the internet.  Nowt.  And it started to get me down. I was alone in the flat all day, Steve was working hard, long hours getting himself established in his new job, no one wanted to hire me,I had no money and I had no friends.  It was awful and I was miserable.  I spent more and more time sleeping, finding a kind of peace in the oblivion of sleep.  One day I had to see my GP about something or the other, and she asked me how I was.  I opened my mouth to say "fine, thank you" and no words came out... but tears did. I sobbed and snotted a long while before I was able to get some words out, and when I finally did, the words were "I am so lonely."