My team was losing again: 0-1 to Everton. Why don’t you change your team, they’re always losing, my friend says. You can’t change your team, I say. The only person I ever knew who changed their team was that student of mine who was severely on the spectrum. My friend says: The only thing you can do is dissolve your friendship group, so that noboody knows you’ve changed your team. I expel air from ny throat volcanically and with exasperation. I don’t have a friendship group. I’m not an Italian toddler, I said. Italians do go around in groups in their Moncler puffa jackets (have you seen them clogging up the pavements?) with friendless outsiders who do not have the Moncler. Friendship groups is a term I never heard till a couple of years ago. It must be a younger people’s thing. Or maybe a Londoner’s thing. Londoners retain friends because they never leave their city. The rest of us leave our towns and cities to go to university and may end up in London, where we know nobody, for work. I lost all my primary school friends when I left primary school. I lost all my secondary school friends when I left secondary school. I lost nearly all my university friends when I left university. I lost nearly all my Paris freinds when I left Paris. In London I have picked up one or two strays along the way, but the idea of friendship groups (what does Shakespeare say, troops of friends) has never registered with me. The idea of a friendship group is a sign of sedentary behaviour .Or maybe I just don’t retain them. Or maybe they just don’t retain me.

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