Carole King sang about it, and there was even a TV show named after it. But how many of us have one, a friend a real friend, someone whom we know will always be there for us, no matter what.

Of course husbands, wives even our children and some relatives we class as friends, but it‘s not the same as a stranger who becomes your friend. Whether it is a friend you meet at school or a work colleague, or someone completely different to you who suddenly is there for you as someone you can talk to and get on with. This is the kind of friend I mean. How many of us have a friend like that I wonder?

I live on an island and have been here for seven years having moved away from the UK some seven years ago. During that time I’ve met many people and have struck up acquaintances but no real friends, not like I had in the UK. At home in Britain I had two real friends one whom I knew from school; the other from when we played in a pop band together. With both of them I have been through the best of times and the worst of times. That I think is what makes a relationship special, being able to laugh and cry metaphorically of course because ‘men don’t cry’ (don’t you believe it).

Today, as I get older by the hour I miss those guys, of course there's the phone and Face Book and all the other inanimate forms of communications, but it is still not the same as sharing a cold lager and some illuminating chat in a local pub. Real friends make eye contact. But maybe I will meet up with them soon and chat about old times.

It’s odd but as you do get older you tend to value your relationships more, especially friends, perhaps because you realise that like you they are no spring chickens anymore. One of them is even a Great Granddad and me well I haven’t become a Granddad at all yet thank God. No perish that thought.

Still it does make you think! And perhaps also what made you friends in the first place and when you do you that then you start to think about all the changes that has happened in your life time, the girls you’ve met, the places you have visited, the loves you have lost, the parents that you grew up with and now have lost too, all that time that has passed you by and you can’t get it back. But throughout and if you have been lucky like me you have had a friend or friends by your side. I think that is what a friend is for don’t you?