Any port.

The best thing about friends - at least I think it's the best; I haven't really thought this through - is that you get to choose them. I mean, obviously, they have to reciprocate or you'll end up with a restraining order, but if you like each other, that's friendship.

Families are a bit more complicated but most people I've met like most of their family most of the time, so that's mostly OK, too.

Classmates and colleagues: well, there it all gets a bit stickier, doesn't it? You get shoved together with people, effectively at random, and you have to make the best of it. And there is something good that can come from that because sometimes you grow to really like someone whom you wouldn't have immediately considered to be friendship material.

But sometimes it's just difficult and no matter how hard you work at it, that other person just seems to see the world from a completely different perspective to you. No matter how you try, you can't see through their eyes, and no matter what you say, they don't seem to hear what you're trying to communicate. (And, I suppose, vice versa.)

This has been happening to me recently, a situation that came to a head today. The situation is now resolved and yet feels completely unfinished. So, in fact, it's ended not resolved. But even once ended, it occupied my thoughts for the rest of the day. At least until I picked up Dan and Abi. Their company and this glass of port have taken the tension out of my shoulders and calmed my thoughts.