I'll be there for you; Well, until you've got children, a partner, a

I'm anticipating a rare, badly-behaved evening out with my closest friend until she calls to announce: "I'll kill two birds with one stone and see you and Aileen and Toni on the same night." Excuse me, but I make that three birds. Surely our friendship hasn't sunk so low that I am seen as part of a batch. I do hope that a night out with me - the only living being who knows precisely what really happened behind the Astoria that time she went down to London - hasn't become something tedious but necessary to be scored off the list, like writing a "thank you" note to an aunt.

However, it seems that friendship is in a state of flux. It used to be that, even if you'd been given a written warning at work and your partner had announced that they needed to be alone for the next several decades, you could always count on your pals. These days, it appears that I am lucky to have anyone to go out with at all. Professor Cary Cooper, BUPA Professor of Psychology and Health at UMIST, says, "A major cause of stress is not the break-up of relationships but the long hours we're working, creating a lack of opportunity to sustain friendships and develop new ones."

What's happening, Professor Cooper explains, is that we're rarely in one place long enough to form meaningful connections. "We're a constantly shifting community, moving away from where we came from. In Scotland we've seen communities break up; even hi-tech industries are downsizing and there is a growing perception of the workforce as disposable, forcing us to move on and chase opportunities." When we do find gainful employment, we are working well past tea time to prove how committed we are. "If we are forming friendships, they tend to be work-based and, as we don't know how long we'll be around, they're functional and short-term. Few of us can say we have more than a couple of truly close friends. How many do you have?"

Oh, heck, absolutely stacks. I am sure they are all trying to email me right now, but the server must be down. Besides, like most thirtysomethings with a job, partner, children and garden certain to wreck any best-kept village aspirations, I can't handle as many friends as I used to. In my teens, with little to occupy me apart from hanging about Irvine Cross looking angry, I'd experience a reassuring glow if I could tot up enough acquaintances to reach double figures (sometimes counting people I didn't like). These days, if the answering machine indicates that more than two people have called, I'm panicking about finding the time to ring them back. An old boss of mine exhibited sheer terror as some hanger-on attempted to befriend her: "I wish Miranda would stop banging my biscuit tin," she snarled. "I don't have room for any more friends until some of my old ones die."

Tim Crawford, a 39-year-old actor and primary carer for his four- year-old son, has seen his old muckers leave Bishopbriggs for London, the States and Australia. "I could feel abandoned and paranoid but all that's happened is that the friendships have switched from face- to-face to email. That'll do me. There's always someone in the pub you can talk any old nonsense to, but I'd rather have a couple of long-distance friends I can count on rather than loads of fair- weather mates."

Tim adds that he has less time for "the people you meet in acting who are your best mate while a production's in progress with promises of 'let's keep in touch', which rarely happens anyway." When he does hook up with old friends - around once a year - they "talk about what other mutual friends are up to. Predictably, there's a lot of reminiscing. Also things like, "D'you reckon we'll get a chance to get down the boozer once the kids are in bed?" and, "That barmaid's got some pair of 'thrupennies' on her."

"People are concerned with keeping up connections," observes Rachel Claire, senior consultant at the Henley Centre, a consumer consultancy in London. "We lead much more fragmented lives than our parents. Having busy lives and playing lots of different roles is seen as positive in today's society, but it's stressful too. Email and mobiles make communication easier but can become burdens in themselves."

It's a problem recognised by Glasgow-born Kate Miller, 40, who relocated from the south-east of England to Mull over a year ago. "I worried about becoming an unofficial B&B but only three groups of friends have trickled up in the year since we moved. The trouble is we're planning our first trip back down south and friends are saying, "I'll take the day off work. We'll have lunch." I'm thinking, Please don't. I'm seeing eight people a day. I can fit you in between four and six."

Wendy Bristow, author of Single And Loving It (Thorsons), recognises the bother of "fitting everyone in". "If you embark on a major relationship, suddenly you've doubled the amount of people you have to see. Friendship also goes through stages; given that we're living a younger lifestyle for longer, we can still be wrapped up in those intense, teenage-style friendships right up until our forties.

"Inevitably, though, all that changes when you start having a proper relationship. A partner is likely to feel threatened by what they perceive as an unnaturally close friendship." Bristow adds that our expectations of marriage or long-term partners have changed too. "It used to be that we would tell a best friend everything. Now we expect a partner to be that best friend."

I was hugely grateful for my partner's company when our twin sons were born. Childbirth hoovers out your address book in an instant: friends are aware that, should they venture to your place for drinks (because, let's face it, you've stopped going out to licensed premises) the evening will be marred by awful wailing from upstairs. While loyal friends may pay occasional visits to jiggle your baby for 1.2 seconds, few are willing to allow their designer clothing to come into intimate contact with your yoghurt-splattered sofa.

In an attempt to make new baby friends, I prowled around the park with a fixed, possibly scary grin, causing strangers to hurry away with their buggies or dive into the undergrowth. Sophie, a PR executive and single parent from Kirkcaldy, now lives in east London and says: "When Georgia was born [eight years ago] I was the only one in my set of ex-college friends to have a baby. Those kind of party friends don't want nights in with smelly nappies. I led a weird double life. One part of me had a glamorous job and drank champers and ate canapes; the other went home to a scuzzy flat and my other mates - east London mums with lazy live-in partners."

Over the years, these women have become Sophie's inner circle. "They're loyal and dependable, which is crucial in a big city, away from my family, when it can feel like everyone is out for themselves." She adds that she rarely hooks up with old friends from Kirkcaldy: "I met one at New Year and she ranted on about her choir and arias while I guzzled white wine. My best friend, who lives in Edinburgh, is a breath of fresh air. We don't talk shop or children and there's that lovely, easy shorthand. You don't have to explain everything."

Luckily, these stalwarts still wait in the wings. Dr Valerie Lamant, a chartered counselling psychologist, says, "We used to create a circle of friends that stayed with us throughout life. Now we're more likely to be in a job for two or three years, and out of that group we'll maintain perhaps one friendship or none at all, then start all over again. On the plus side, though, long-term friendships are more mobile now. Distance is not the deterrent that it used to be."

Dr Lamant believes that such friendships provide comfort in an increasingly insecure world. "They are the ones who go back to school or university days - people we've grown with. That creates a particular bond, a 'specialness'. You can be pretty intimate with someone you've known for four or five years but you can't create a history that never was.

"If anything," she adds, "these friends - the ones who knew you as a crazy teen, not just a busy professional - are more important than ever. We no longer live near the nuclear family and are more likely to be facing change and coping with the whole work thing. Old friends are an oasis of security."

If there is a glaring gap in your Filofax where Mary from primary seven should be, several on-line friend-finding services will help you sniff out old school buddies. Julie Pankhurst, who dreamed up www.friendsreunited.co.uk during her pregnancy, says, "Everyone leaves school with the intention of keeping in touch but people relocate - often to the other side of the world. We all have a certain nosiness about who's doing what; and a love of reminiscing." Of school-based friendships, she says, "They hark back to when we were nave and innocent. Picking up old ties gives us that warm, feel- good factor."

In contrast, shiny new pals see just a fraction of the real you. "We are constantly reinventing ourselves," says Professor Cary Cooper. "Friends you have made since the end of your education are unlikely to see the full you exposed; they just get chunks of you." I wonder which chunks exactly. "The bits we are prepared to let them see, while sustaining the friendship on a functional level."

According to Wendy Bristow, men in particular keep friends at arm's length: "Society allows for women to have closer, more intense friendships, though that is changing. Men are brought up not to have feelings or certainly not to show them." In my circle, it would appear that men exist quite happily with a tiny cluster of pals; any woman I know spends a hefty chunk of her Saturday buying birthday gifts for the most obscure acquaintances, while a sneaky look through your average male's address book reveals merely "Andy". Yet despite the hassles and demands on your time, where modern friendship is concerned, more is more. Professor Stephen Palmer, Director of the Centre for Stress Management, believes, "Of course we still need friends. Social support is the best possible buffer against stress, and colleagues are no substitute. Go drinking with workmates and you find yourself gassing on about work; there isn't that cut-off time. You never truly wind down."

Professor Palmer recommends a wide and varied circle of friends, "You need a listening ear, someone to challenge your thinking and another who's good at coming up with solutions." As for those who offer none of the above? "Ask yourself why you feel so drained after seeing them. Then fix it or cut them out."

I sincerely hope that I am not being Tippexed out of address books when I am told that the night out with my best friend (plus Aileen and Toni) has been cancelled until further notice. Yet I cannot help suspecting that the three of them are, as I write, huddled in a booth, laughing raucously.

Paranoia, of course; another symptom of jittery modern life. Anyway, my best friend reassures me that we'll get together soon.

Great, when?

She says she'll email meu

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