Children brutally 'curate' your social circle, but having fewer friends makes me happy

Last week, I walked 20 miles along the South Down Way. It was cold and wet and the promised views were obscured by damp, chilly cloud. We ate, not at a charming rustic pub with a roaring fire, but at a boozer on the M23 that was like a kind of unbranded Harvester. There were constant winds of 30mph, which blew freezing needles of drizzle into my face; I wound up with one of those ruddy complexions that makes you look like you’ve downed a couple of bottles of scotch in the sun.

Sounds awful, doesn’t it? In fact, it was two of the best days I’ve had this year. The reason? I was with four old friends and we hadn’t got together since the last one of us got married.

It made me realise how little I see of my friends these days – and what a shame this is.

It’s true that, unlike in my mid 20s, I don’t have several dozen friends within half a mile of my London flat. But even allowing for laziness, busy lives, and some of them living in far flung places, at the age of 46, you barely see your friends at all.

This had me thinking. If I don’t hang out with my friends who do I hang out with? My wife and kids, obviously. The parents of my kids’ friends (who can become friends, in a slightly faute de mieux kind of way). The people I work with. The last of these is an odd one. You see your colleagues every day, drink with then far too often, they feel sort of friend-esque, and then they leave and you never see them again. It’s a bit like serving together in a war, but without the trench foot, fallen comrades, undiagnosed PTSD or reunions in Northern France.

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OK, the hospitality industry is nothing like fighting for your country, but you take my point.

The great formal festivals of friendship are behind you too. In my early 30s, I got pretty tired of travelling halfway across the country (and even halfway across Europe) to celebrate the second wedding of the month, while still feeling hung-over from the associated three day stag in Latvia. These days, there’s a few third weddings, which are small sedate affairs, no funerals yet, and the next major birthday to look forward to is 50, which doesn’t really feel like a cause for celebration. I find myself thinking that, were some half-forgotten friend to announce a wedding, I’d be looking forward to it like my eight-year old looks forward to Christmas. Hell, I’d be excited about coughing up £800 to be sick in an Estonian gutter on the stag do.

However, I suspect the real reason that I’m waxing elegiac about friendship is that, all of a sudden, I have a bit of time on my hands. My youngest child is about to be four and I’ve finally emerged from the long dark, smelly tunnel of sleepless nights and nappy changes. I’ve also realised that discussing Netflix on Twitter is not a substitute for a social life (and besides, I’m scraping the bottom of the box-set barrel). Clearly, action needs to be taken. It’s time to launch SocialLife2.0.

Once you realise you need to start seeing your mates again, it occurs to you that there are some advantages to having lived la vida domestica for the best part of a decade. You’ve dropped dozens of useless people who you paid £70 a head for at your wedding and then never saw again. You’ve dropped your needy friends who require endless reassurance. You’ve dropped your flaky friends who rearrange a dozen times. In modern parlance, having young children has brutally “curated” your social circle, and so you wind up with a dozen or so people you really love.

So, I’ve started various walking clubs with various sets of friends. Before you spit your drink across the table screaming, “Walking clubs. Hahaha,” hear me out. This is actually an advantage of age. Now I’m in my mid-40s, nobody wants to meet for a lunch that goes on until midnight and that includes me. Of course, they still drink – but they feel the need to earn it. Hence the six hour walk before six hours’ drinking: it’s all about balance. Also, the different groups is a maturity benefit too. Some friends just don’t mix with others. Age has granted me the wisdom to stop trying to make people who really don’t get on like each other.

I meet three or four sets of people, twice a year. The format’s always broadly the same. Thursday night in a small village on the downs, curry, beer and unwinding, the laughter a little too loud, a bit too keen, a bit too excited. Once you’re past the slightly gauche first hour (and have given up trying to work out who is the richest and most successful), there's genuine happiness in the realisation they still love you and you still love them.

In fact, but for the hair loss and weight gain, it’s the same as it always was. The dreadful jokes you cracked at 15 are still funny 30 years later – or at least funny to you. Men, unlike women, never grow up and this perhaps is why, although family is the most important thing, you really do need to spend time with your friends. It puts everything else into perspective. Of course I love my wife and kids. I’ve done OK. I don’t even hate myself. Life is great, really great. All these thoughts occur to you because of the half-forgotten brotherly love you’ve rediscovered.

There’s a lot to be said for the long day walking too. You open up to each other. You admit you were a dick when you fell out 15 years ago and it doesn’t matter. You’re kind of honest about being past the halfway point and you’re OK about your life being quite ordinary. Because everyone walks at a different pace, you talk to one mate for an hour or so and then move on. The years slip away and you’re teasing each other (and even viciously bullying each other) like you did half a lifetime ago – and it’s great. You love it. Life is amazing. Your friends are amazing, like brothers. If the weather’s bad enough you feel like you’re in the storm scene in King Lear.

At the end of our walk, we checked into a nice hotel in Brighton, one of the consolations of age being decent accommodation. Then, after restorative baths, we went on to get utterly slaughtered over good food at my restaurant in Brighton.

There’s something a bit Goodfellas about having your own restaurant. The staff spoil you. They make your friends feel like kings. The wine, vodka and everything else flows unchecked. The old flames, war stories and utterly embarrassing failures from our youth are brought up again and again, not least because memory’s not what it was. You look around and realise these people are a kind of extended family. They’ll be with you until the end. As you knock back your fifth glass of some very expensive digestif, you feel like you’re 21 again and the world, with all its possibilities is ahead of you.

Of course the next day, you realise you’re not 21. As the author John Niven said in a recent interview, “When you’re in your twenties you can have three days of fun and a one-day hangover. Now you have one day of fun and three days of hangover.” Which is why you only do it a few times a year.

But still, it’s fantastic. It makes everything else better. It probably adds more years to your life than any vitamin pill or diet. It will make you genuinely happy. So if you can’t remember the last time you got together with your friends, make an effort. Find something you can all do – walking or sailing or poker nights or just a big get-together meal a couple of times a year. I love my friends and you should love yours.

I love them almost enough to be looking forward to my 50th..