I'm in my forties. I have just got in and put the television on. It's 6pm.
Flicking through the TV channels I stumble across some old friends of mine. I smile and sit down on the sofa. It's always nice to see them, and what's more, they never seem to age. They live in their little world in my TV. They have been there for many, many years.
The TV series Friends has been on our screens for twenty-one years. Yet it still seems as current as ever. Ask anyone from my generation and they will all know the heavily loaded connotation of 'How you doing?'.
I recently referred to a pub singer as being a little bit 'smelly cat' - and don't get me started on being 'on a break'... we all know where that gets us. (How could he sleep with the girl from the photocopying shop? How?)
Ross, Rachel, Chandler. Joey, Monica and Phoebe were my TV friends long before I met some of my real friends. I still have a friend who we refer to as 'Monica' to this day as she is addicted to cleaning.
They have seen me through heartbreak and hangovers, grief and love. They have got me through Sundays of living alone. I've watched them stay the same, as I've got older - overtaking them all.
I remember watching Friends in my very first student house, all of us, sat around watching it on a Sunday morning, eating cheese on toast and drinking tea out of chipped halls of residence mugs.
It really is comfort tele; with its catchphrases becoming part of our everyday vocab. I mean, how many of us have shouted 'pivot' whilst moving a sofa? I knew it wasn't just me.
We were invested in the relationships. None of us liked it when the girl from Cold Feet turned up, because we all knew Ross and Rachel were destined to be together and we were rooting for them.
When Chandler's proposal to Monica went wrong, we felt for him. We urged Rachel, in the final series to just 'GET OFF THE PLANE'.
It makes me feel nostalgic in a way that other things rarely do, next to the scent of my mums perfume and the memory of my grandmothers roast dinners. But in terms of TV comfort, I am pretty sure no other series can match it. I can't imagine my niece in twenty years feeling nostalgic about Gossip Girl, but alas I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I would love her to feel as nostalgic about a TV show as I do.
Twenty-one years of Friends is a long time. But it's ageless, like Lulu. It's a soundtrack to many of our lives. University days, hangovers on a Sunday and those days where you just don't want to think. It's escapism in its purest form.
For me, I hope they never reunite to make a film. That would be like seeing the love of your teenage life, two decades later when they are fat and wrinkled. Some things need to remain as they are.
I don't think anything else can match it. A TV series that is still going as strong as ever despite only ever showing repeats. It's a timeless classic.
So here's to Friends. May it be shown on some obscure TV channel for many years to come. I hope it's still on when I am old and grey, so I can say 'oh. Those guys. They have always (cheesy pun alert) been there for me'.