How to survive London's very modern friendships: from office best mates to parenting pals

From office best mates to fellow misfits and parenting pals - the capital is a melting pot of modern friendships. Laura Craik on how she finally found her gang
Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley in Absolutely Fabulous
BBC
Laura Craik23 June 2016

Yesterday, in the process of sending a text to a mum friend (“The latte was lukewarm again. Hate that new barista. Yes will pick up the kids at usual time”) I noticed a name in Contacts that I didn’t recognise. Who was Alvin Quek? Intrigued, I carried on scrolling. Who was Pepe Palmer? They sounded like characters from a Tarantino film. Had I ever known such mysterious, improbably named men?

Like most people I have a long, unwieldy Contacts list that, if you discount butcher, doctor and plumber, makes me appear far more sociable and connected than I really am. Like my Facebook page (370 friends) and my Twitter feed (21,000 followers), it suggests I am wildly popular, with a bevy of pals I can summon at whim.

But while my digital self is engaged in a sociable maelstrom of pithy comments about the plotline of Orange Is the New Black, my real self is often sat on the sofa, alone. Trying to get anyone to go to the pub for a pint is a process more complex than Brexit. Everyone in London is so busy that it’s easier to flirt with shallow friendships than it is to meet real friends.

Those left feeling lonely by endless pics of #SquadGoals should be heartened by new research which finds that we may all actually have only five real friends. Scientists claim that while humans have the capacity to form complex societies there is an upper limit to how many friends we can have in our inner circle — one that has gone unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years. Take that, Taylor Swift.

All friendships, however good, will ebb, flow and evolve according to your stage of life. The older I get the more blessed I feel still to have good friends from school: that we knew each other as teenagers feels wonderfully reassuring. In my twenties I was a bit mistrustful of people who had zero school friends, until it dawned on me that maybe they’d just hated school.

London is full of people who have reinvented themselves; crammed with folk who view friendships as commodities to be traded with for currencies more dubious than companionship and love. But it is also a city where people finally find a sense of belonging, often after years of feeling like misfits in the place they were born.

When you first move to London your new friendships are like love affairs: passionate and intense, every emotion heightened by the fizzing backdrop of the city. Sometimes they burn out. Sometimes they endure. Sometimes they lead to more friendships, a criss-cross of connections strung across the city like fairy lights, illuminating the path ahead.

When you first move to London your new friendships are like love affairs 
shutterstock

Since most people move to the city in search of work, then swiftly find that work consumes them (since we’re all working longer hours than ever), it’s no surprise that work relationships hold a special place in Londoners’ hearts.

It takes real skill to handle the range of crazies you meet in any given office; to endure eight hours a day with someone who, normally, you’d cross the street to avoid. It is one of the great tragedies of life that we must spend so long among ambitious people whose only agenda is to claw their way to the top at any cost.

But in every herd of swine there are pearls. Some of my dearest friendships have been forged over a computer. There is something uniquely bonding about working together against a common adversary, moaning about the canteen chips and the psychotic boss.

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In London, friendships face particular pressures. Everyone is busy and exhausted. After a long work commute involving the Circle line it can be hard to find the time and energy for a social commute. This is why I still haven’t visited A’s new house in Ealing, even though she moved there in 2014. How many times have I met her two-year-old son? Twice. I see A quite regularly, but as our friendship group lives in W13, NW6, SE11 and NW5, we always meet centrally, minus our kids, so that we can talk without interruption. And drink wine.

Which brings us to the New Parent Years. However much of a gadabout you profess to be, nothing — repeat, nothing — can prepare you for the fact that your social life will shrink to the size of your postcode once the baby comes along.

Did I say postcode? I meant “own street + local park + nearest source of coffee” — a radius of approximately half a mile.

You thought you’d dealt with every human life form at work? Ha. Eventually, you will find yourself at a soft play centre, talking to a woman wearing a surfeit of jade. Her toddler can’t eat your organic rice cakes because “they’re berry-flavoured”. She will tell you — with a straight face — what an advanced sense of rhythm he has and how well he’s doing in Mandarin.

These tales aren’t the urban myths you thought they were when you were 28 and eating arancini at Polpo. They’re real. The good news, though, is that there are a lot of parents in this town. You will find your tribe. And as your kids grow up, struggle with maths, become infested with nits, and get sick with something you’re convinced is meningitis, you will find more solace than you ever thought imaginable in a Friday morning text that says “Hot today! Park after school? Beer?!?!”

Congratulations! You have turned into a person who feels deliriously happy at the prospect of sitting on some grass drinking a warm bottle of Peroni.

Things to do in London this weekend (June 24-26)

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It isn’t the rooftop pool at Shoreditch House. There will be no long, meandering conversations about life’s great mysteries. But it’s amazing how strong a bond can be forged between a bunch of people who only ever get five minutes and 43 seconds to talk to each other before a child interrupts and tells them it’s going to pee its pants if you don’t take it to the toilet.

Whether you’re a parent or not there is something uniquely comforting about friends who are in the exact same life stage as you. Nobody understands the horror of being made redundant/getting divorced/trying to buy a house like someone who is going through it at the same time.

Even so, it’s wise not to be myopic and surround yourself solely with people who spout the same politics, like the same music and wear the same Stans. One of the ironies of living in London is that you are exposed to a vast and diverse gene pool of potential friends, yet find yourself with scant spare time to forge alliances.

No wonder we all rely on social media so much. It might be a poor substitute for meeting up over dinner but sometimes a quick WhatsApp conversation is all there’s time for.

Recent research by an online marketing company found that four out of five teenagers rank their Facebook friends as more important than their school friends. If a fairly unencumbered demographic like teenagers are more engaged by the digital world than the real one, what hope is there for the rest of us? Engaging as an online conversation can be, it’s no substitute for a hug. Or eye contact. Or watching a friend’s tense face relax into happy acquiescence because you told them a not-even-that-funny joke.

The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” It’s not the most sentimental quote about friendship but it’s surely one of the most apposite in an age which pressures us to present the best possible version of ourselves at all time.

Haters gonna hate. Squadders gonna squad. I’ll stick to having friends, thanks.

Follow Laura Craik on Twitter: @lauracraik

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