Those of you who are fans of the late 90s sitcom “Spaced” will hopefully recognise the above line…it’s from Series 2, when Tim Bisley (played by the wonderful Simon Pegg) realising he needs to do something quite special to regain the trust of his landlady, Marsha, imagines a scene where he comes out with the above line, followed by “then you’re the best auntie I’ve got”, when thereafter Marsha ends up snogging him….

It’s a painful yet poignant scene, and whilst I can (and probably will) write about how Spaced is simply one of the most wonderful sitcoms ever written, this blog isn’t really about Spaced, rather about friendship.

I’m approaching 40, and for the last 7 years have been indulging in a tradition with my friends known as “Bang On”….Those of you who know me very well will have heard of me talk about “Bang On”, and for the uninitiated, this is quite simply the monthly ritual where I meet up with my best friends Chris, Dan and Kish and the occasional guest, such as Thomas, Meleri and Paul, for a few drinks and food. So what’s special about this? After all, isn’t this just going out for some bevvies with your mates?

Well, yes, sort of, but the difference is that for these last 7 years, we have collectively simply kept the first Friday of every month free precisely for this purpose. Initially, this seemed like a slightly contrived thing to do…after all, here we were, a group of close friends, why would we need to fix such a date to meet up, I mean, wouldn’t we just meet up naturally given we’re mates anyway? Yes and no… as time has passed, and we have all moved onto different stages of our lives, both personally and professionally, actually making time to see each other in our busy lives became more challenging. And deciding one night that we should keep one night free a month, at roughly the same stage of each month, where the four of us and anyone else who happened to be free and willing to join us, would actually create a sense of certainty, of knowing that however difficult or busy the previous few weeks had been, you knew that on a given date every month, you would find yourself in the pub with your best pals either chatting through whatever had bothered you that month, or just listening to what was on your friends’ minds that night….these nights are priceless.

More so because the nature of the family unit has changed. Gone are large families, with regular gatherings where you caught up with your cousins, uncles, aunties etc. The nature of family has changed….family units are becoming smaller, both as a consequence of people having fewer children, but also because people live much further apart than they did, and whilst technology such as Skype can help bridge the gap, it can never replace meeting up with your best friends for a few drinks.

And the benefit in some respects is that friends become more important. They say blood is thicker than water, and perhaps that’s true for your most immediate family such as mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters…but you can choose your friends, whereas you can’t choose your family. How and who you choose to spend your increasingly scarce time with is much more down to you than it ever was – and as families become smaller and traditional families boundaries become less restrictive, this increasingly becomes the norm. So as the great Simon Pegg says, friends are replacing family in 21^st Century society.

Bang On!