Dear all my friends,

I miss you. I really do. Sometimes, I'll be making myself a procrastinatorial cup of tea and I'll think of something you said once and I'll laugh. Just me and the kettle. Laughing and thinking about the good times.

I haven't spoken to you in ages. I feel bad about that, both because I hope you don't think I don't like you, and also because I would really quite like to be having a fabulous time somewhere in a warm bar with you and your nearest and dearest friends, with a glass of something or a cup of something in my hand.

But I know you will forgive me, because you have forgiven me before. I have done this before. I do this all the time. This is a pattern. An abusive, selfish pattern. I am just like those men who promise their girlfriends they are definitely leaving their wives just as soon as the time is right.

Except that I'm not. I adore my friends. There is no disloyalty here. It's just like Gloria Steinem said, though, "Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else".

Yes, once again I have used a quote I found on the internet to back up my morally questionable behaviour. But what else do I have? I don't go outside, I don't speak to anyone. My current best friend is the guy at the corner of my street who makes me coffee and asks me where I'm up to in Crime and Punishment (we're having a race).

But, sadly, Gloria Steinem offers me as good an explanation as any. When I try to write something, which I'm trying to do at the moment, I am lost. I am lost to the world of fashion (hence my faux-velvet pants with the fake drawstring and what can only be described as a ladder over the right bum cheek), I am lost to the world of nightlife (movies and books are as exciting as my evenings get) and I am lost to the world of you, my friends.

Probably what I'm writing is terrible. Probably I will emerge around the end of the film festival with a flu and a desperate desire to have a conversation about something other than my work. Probably I will wonder why I disappeared for so long.

You, meanwhile, are (in no particular order) about to have a baby, about to get married, about to go overseas, just back from overseas, overseas, newly single, annoyingly in love, freshly employed, hating work, moving house, starring in a movie, having a sex-toy party, having a birthday party, having a going-away party, moving to New York (smartarse - you'd better send me prizes), and (I can only presume) saving up lots of money for my birthday on August the eleventh.

Just saying.

Love,

Lorin.