Several months after the end of high school I rang my friend Jo on a Saturday afternoon to see if she wanted to go out. No, she said, she had too much study to do and she was behind because she'd been out with Linda and Sally the night before... Okay, fair enough. So I rang someone else and we made arrangements. Friend #2 picked me up and as we were waiting at a set of lights I looked out the window and saw Jo and a few people from school going into a pub.

The meaning was clear: although we'd been good friends in the last two years of high school (and often came equal first or second in the classes we had together), I was no longer hip enough to hang out with. I was a fringe goth with an interest in the club scene; Jo was a fringe goth who was moving across to the mainstream. Ironically it was Jo who had got me into clubbing.

I don't recall if I ever remonstrated with Jo. She did come to my 21st, but so did a lot of other people I wouldn't, at that time, have called close friends "any more".

People can be such shits sometimes.