I've got a favourite book at home. Well it's not mine. It was given to my father by one of his students, probably about 40 years ago. It's a translation of the poems of Hafiz. It is done in the form of stitchomancy, ie that you can open it and it will help you with the particular transition of life. Yesterday i was really tired, which makes me depressed. I'd not slept the night before, and had had a major collision on Saturday - well that's how i'll put it, because you never know who reads a blog. So it was an arabic friend who pulled me up for being down. Not that he doesnt get down, but when i saw a friend walk past he let me go wheras he wouldnt before cos even though i said it was being tired he said i wasnt happy. When i got home I was still tired, but happier because of talking with friends. I needed sleep but had that frustration before it. I went and opened the book and it was a page i had never seen before, about the fact that your friends have such influence on you you must check them out really carefully to see if they are having a bad influence on you. I remembered back through the year that that is exactly what i have been doing. I thought of one friend who protests her deep friendship for me but her actions speak louder than those words and especially when she protests how wrong it is for friends to ring up after years in tears because their marriage has collapsed. I don't think that is wrong, because those friends needed someone, even if they did not get the total sympathy they expected from me due to their blinding anger, which in time will abate. Other than her, there are no more friends that are bad for me - because there is a difference between friends in need, who are in a down spell, and friends who are bad for you. The friends up the road i gave up because they were bad for me - when they got drunk their attitude toward me showed they were unfamiliar with my train of thought which to them was not of their unparalled level. They also were critical of my friendships with labourers and tradesmen rather than intellectuals and snobs. Even their children were horrified sometimes in their treatment of me. So i opened the book again, still waiting for that blessed sleep to alleviate my temporary trauma. It said that i was well on the way even though i thought i was an idiot. Well, in that vein : don't kid yourself, you're doing fine. Sleep came.