Every time I talk about my links to a tiny Highland village I found myself in again this weekend for my birthday, it turns into somewhat of a spiel (people never actually ask for it, and I give it every time anyway, but I love a good story and, dear reader, I do think this is a good one).

I am here to visit my gran; just that she’s not my gran, not by blood anyway. In fact, we’re not related at all. Probably not even closely, as my dad is German, my mum is American and she is Scottish. Yet, she has been something like a gran to me all my life so why not call her that?

I am actually part of the third generation of what has become a 50 year-long friendship between my family, the one I share blood with, and this Scottish family; my “gran”, her daughter, son, grandchildren, their children.

It started on a camping trip to Scotland my German grandparents were on in the 1970s. They had gone to the pub for the night and got chatting to some of the locals, but two locals in particular and just hit it off. My Scottish gran says she instantly felt the warmth my German gran radiated, a feeling that I know well. She really was someone whose smile lit up a room and just someone fun to be around.

I find it funny to think that neither pair probably knew at the time what their chance meeting would end up being. They stayed in touch - phone calls, birthday cards, etc - and one day decided to visit each other … and then kept doing it. My dad became close with the Scottish son and daughter. I still, although not enough, speak with their children and I hope, when maybe one day we have our own, they will continue the trend.

Ultimately, it is why I spent every summer in Scotland growing up. It is also why I lived in this Highland village myself as a teen for one year. A chance meeting that turned into a friendship that turned into something so much bigger.

It is probably one of my favourite, or at least most cited, examples of the amazing power of friendships. But really, it shouldn’t stand out as something I have not come to know in other circumstances. Really – luckily – I also have plenty of my own stories to tell.

I have been thinking about friendships a lot this year. Mostly I have thought about how much they mean to me. I do genuinely believe friends are the best thing in the world.

I have also been thinking how I can be a better friend by being less of a friendaholic. To stop stretching myself too thin, by trying to make friends with every person I meet and instead focusing on the people I value (that was the topic of another column, though!) Anyway, for some reason, I have been thinking about friendships a lot again this exact week.

Maybe, I am getting somewhat sentimental because it is the end of the year. Maybe it is because my partner and I are somewhat (not really – at least not very actively) planning our wedding after getting engaged recently. The one thing we have “planned” is that we want to share it with all the many people close to us (while neither of us wants extravagant, it’s not going to be a small wedding, let’s put it that way).

Maybe it is because, this year in particular, I have been really lucky to rekindle a number of past friendships. On my birthday, I received messages and phone calls from people in Germany that, prior to this spring, I had not seen or very much spoken to in over five years, sometimes more.

Childhood friendships are strange. Many of these friendships faded as we stopped school. Yet, they are people that have known me for most of my life – one I met when I was only three years old. We share memories of moments that made us who we are, but we have all also evolved without each other since.

Would we become friends if we met today, each being the people we are now? Honestly, maybe we wouldn’t. My life is different. So is theirs: two are mums now. Another is a doctor, with an action-packed schedule on her days off, that includes rope climbing (something she most definitely never did when we were younger. Back then, we shared a hate for any exercise other than swimming). Another lives in Berlin. Maybe, on the surface, my life and hers are quite similar. However, the reality is that we also spent eight years doing similar things in different cities while barely talking, apart from our annual Happy Birthday messages, so it feels different.

Yet, when I saw them, despite the minor awkwardness at the very start, I felt something special. You can grow and evolve and change, but you can’t replace years-worth of memories and nostalgia and innocence. Your childhood friend may not become your friend if you met them as an adult, but no new adult friend can replace the bond you made during these formative years.

It is a similar feeling I have with two of my friends from the Highlands. I remember how much I love them the second I see them, despite us never talking more than once every couple of months (at a push) or seeing each other more than twice a year (again, at a push).

The question is does it make my connection with them, or my German friends, any less special than the one I share with my immediate friendship group (who I now feel I haven’t given enough space to in this column, despite them meaning the world to me. I am not being disingenuous in saying that I would not be able to exist without them or that I would, if I had to, die for them). I don’t think so.

While we have all gone to do different things, we still feel so much love for each other. They might not know this current version of me to the T, but they fell in love with the version, a slightly rowdy 16-year-old, that got me to where I am today. At the pub on Saturday, myself and one of them talked about the day we met for the first time. “Was that when we got kicked out of the school dance?” I asked her and she said “No, that was when YOU got kicked out.”

While my core group are my friends in the more stereotypical understanding of friendship – the people I turn to, those that know all my secrets, and that know me best – these other friendships are just as much something I would never want to let go of or live without.

Truly, rekindling friendships I thought were lost has been one of the best things of 2023 for me. I think what I have come to realise is that friendships come in so many different shapes and sizes and that each of them is marvellous – the best thing in the world really.