At school, you made friends by sitting next to someone and agreeing a teacher was weird. After thirty, that system is decommissioned. Your old friends moved to towns with good schools and bad trains. Your work friends were only ever fellow hostages. So I have written the listing.
Position: Friend (Permanent, Part-Time, Mostly Theoretical)
Small, tired household seeks one adult companion for occasional conversation, light walking and comparing knees. A real opportunity to grow, slowly, until one of us moves away and the group chat goes quiet for good.
Key Responsibilities
- Attend a coffee once every eight weeks. Cancel half of them. Same as me.
- Reply to messages within five working days. Seven for voice notes.
- Remember two facts about my life. My name is optional. Nobody else has managed it.
- Laugh at the same joke twice. You will hear it a third time.
- Agree that leaving at 9:15pm is not rude. It’s triage.
Essential Criteria
- Must be free on a Thursday. Weekends are booked solid with children’s parties and staring at walls.
- Must live under three hours away. Friendship does not survive the motorway.
- Must tolerate silences that aren’t awkward, just two people running out of battery.
Making a friend after thirty is like dating, except nobody admits it, and the rejection arrives as a calendar decline.
Desirable Criteria
- Owns a dog. The dog is the real reason I’m applying.
- Lives near a decent bakery, so at least one of us gets something out of this.
- Agrees every film is forty minutes too long. Like most friendships.
What We Offer
A loyal, slow-moving friendship. Adequate listening. Honest feedback on haircuts you can’t undo. Help moving house, provided there’s pizza and no fourth floor. No pension. No progression. No guarantee I won’t drop you for someone with a hot tub.
The Interview Process
Stage one: we talk at a mutual friend’s barbecue for longer than expected. Stage two: one of us says “we should get a coffee.” Stage three: nothing happens for fourteen months. Stage four: we bump into each other at a funeral and say “we should get a coffee.”
That’s how it works now. No forms. Just two adults agreeing to try, then quietly not.
Apply in person, at the dog park, 7am. I’ll be the one in the 2014 hoodie. Alone. Obviously.