The other day, on a train journey back to London from a meeting in the Midlands, I got bored and decided to go through my Palm address book and do some tallying up:

I have 38 close friends *

I have 109 good friends **

I have 472 amiable acquaintances ***

I have 7 enemies ****

* These are the people who I would phone immediately if I were to find out that I had a brain tumour.

** These are the people whose death from a brain tumour would make me ineffably sad.

*** These are the people I would hope could recover from a brain tumour.

**** These are the people I would generally hope could recover from a brain tumour, but if they didn't then I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.