Today, I sat around a table with a friend, her son and my son sharing lunch. Sushi – which I don't particularly care for. Delicious, fresh sushi. I could have been eating air or snow or honey sandwiches. It didn't matter. The magic was not the food but the company. The comfy synergy between the four people at that stark white table in a stark white room. Cold, and yet warming my heart in a myriad of ways.

My friend is a caring, sensitive, thinking, intelligent woman. She appears conservative, though her signature touch of red hints at passion and cheek. Fit, trim, attractive, she encompasses health and I always think she is a mere instant away from anarchy in some form. The thing I love most about her is her inclusiveness and caring for humanity. She probably has no idea how her words have boosted me in dark times.

You hear the saying: "He/she doesn't have a bad bone in their body." If ever it applied to anyone, it applies to my friend.

Thankyou, friend, for arranging lunch together today. The experience of sitting eating rice and seaweed with you and our amazing sons – once little boys together at primary school when we, as mothers, waited for them to dash out of class after 3pm – lifted my spirits. How proud we were of our boys then and how proud we are now they are six foot and sport beards and continue to love their mums.

In life we meet people we connect with and often those people are very different from us and yet there is something that works. Each and every friend gives us, and we give them, something.

I am truly grateful for what I experienced today from my lovely friend. What's needed is for me to let her know that. We often forget to express gratitude. It beats seaweed and rice hands down.