Friends and Family

When a friend of mine gets married or gets into a relationship with somebody, I try to get to know their partner. It's not always easy, or practical, but my view and hope is that given that we both have a love for my friend in common, we have a good chance of being friends too. It doesn't always work out: sometimes my friends prefer to keep the different aspects of their lives separate, or sometimes the partners prefer to do their own thing while my friend is seeing me. But it's nice when it does work out. I think the best example of this is my friendship with Kirsty.

When the situation is reversed, then, I am especially touched by friends who obviously share this attitude. I can think of four very close friends - one a cousin, actually - who have taken my family on board. They have made a real effort to become friends with Dragon Dada, and have got onto very good terms with our two Dragonets as well. Not all of these friends of mine are necessarily family people, or people who want children themselves at the moment, but because these are my children, they care about them. I find this really touching - that somebody loves me so much that they automatically want to love the people I love. It's a very special feeling.

I was extremely fortunate last night to have one of those people visit me. He's one of my oldest friends and for years I under-estimated his friendship - thinking he was someone whose company I enjoyed very much but not necessarily ranking him as a confidant. Now, I'd say that he's one of my very dearest and closest friends, and this was proved by the fact that by the time he had left I was, for the first time in months, completely relaxed and on a real high.

As well as being very caring, he's a lot of fun and extremely interesting to talk to. He's heavily involved in politics and that's something I know little about, and mainly from an activists' viewpoint, in that I campaign on various issues on behalf of a few select charities. It's very interesting, therefore, to get the inside view on some of the issues from someone who's really thought about the practicalities of each issue and the ramifications of different changes.

Thank you, Simon, for a lovely evening.