Dovecote Friendships

Outside picturesque Aldbury stands a dovecote built in 1753, retaining much of its 18th-century character. The floor is made of packed earth, and the walls are lined with 482 brick-framed nesting boxes. Clearly, it housed a fair number of neighbours at close quarters. Such an extensive dovecote signalled wealth and status. Squabs (young doves) were considered a delicacy, and droppings (columbine) were prized as potent fertilizer. In return, doves had a stable, warm environment for breeding, with supplemental food reinforcing their homing instinct. Doves abandoned dovecotes only when neglected. As with doves, one must be vigilant with people. In 1992, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar postulated that humans can maintain about 150 stable social relationships, based on the size of the neocortex in primates. Dunbar also identified subgroups within this number: close friends, good friends, acquaintances, and valuable contacts. In the 4th century BC, Aristotle similarly defined three types of friendship: utility, pleasure, and the good. Friendships of utility are commonplace but necessary for society’s function. In contrast, friendships of the good are rare and the greatest of these. Almost two millennia later, Montaigne published his celebrated essay, Of Friendship. Montaigne emphasised that true friendship is a deep, sincere, and almost mystical bond, where two people share a profound mutual understanding, with no pretence or self-interest. It is an unspoken, transcendent communion of souls. In reality, our lives are underpinned by a tide of weak ties—the cacophony of hundreds of friends of utility who may be proximal to us but meet no unspoken need within us. We long for a depth of friendship that is ineffably sublime and inexplicable, "because it was her, because it was me". However ephemeral, I remember a time when I fell, but not in the way one normally falls.