I RETURN from a night at the pub feeling dejected. Again I went on a mission to find myself a friend -- someone to talk to, perhaps even go out with. Again I failed.

Since upping sticks from Sunny Rochdale in the summer, I have noticed a distinct deficiency in the social department. I go to the cupboard marked "friends" and I find it bare.

I knew making friends with complete strangers was never going to be easy, but I never realised how nigh-on an impossible task it would prove to be.

My neighbours are as much a mystery to me now as they were when I first moved in some four months ago. I realise this is not the age of the welcoming basket of fruit our parents got when they moved into a new home, but for a living area so built up, we are distinctly apart. I can honestly say I don't know the names of any of them.

I know their habits -- good surveillance skills have seen to that. The young lad at Number Three still lives with his mum, although he seems to have much a freer reign as I did when I was his age (a lot of friends round, raucous behaviour), while at Number Seven a little old lady resides. She is one of the few with whom a good morning is often exchanged. But ask me her name and I would be unable to answer.

Marry the modern phenomenon of keeping oneself to oneself with city centre living and the problem multiplies 10-fold.

My corner shop is not your parochial, friendly outlet, which has the owner's name proudly adorned over the doorway on a fading banner. Not unless he is called WH Smith.

And many of the pubs on my student-littered doorstep are of a garish design, with oversized Connect Four games in the corner. Every time I go in there is a different member of staff (or three) behind the bar, rendering any kind of fluent contact useless.

Ideally I wanted to bag myself a pal -- meet a like-minded individual to share a couple of laughs with, instead of relying on the Long Suffering Marjorie for company all the time.

Don't get me wrong, I obviously enjoy taking my partner out, but I'm male and as such it's built into my psyche that I need to spend time with my own.

Back in Sunny Rochdale, Friday nights were always set aside for the lads.

Not that those particular nights were in any way special, but it was just male company. We would talk about nothing in particular, laugh at meaningless jokes and just get messy drunk.

Since moving away, Friday nights have become staying-in nights, watching Friends (the irony is not lost). The LSM is all right. She's at college and has a whirl of a social life. Friday nights are set aside for the girls, where they go out, talk about shopping, laugh at washing-powder jokes and have a couple of white wines.

Probably.

I've lost touch with most of my Rochdale acquaintances already. I still have a group of hardcore pals (for "group" read "two"), but we are all in different parts of the country. The well-mentioned Fred the Dread is rooted in the South, the Muppet is stuck in the middle, and I'm here Oop North. Our meetings are getting rarer and rarer and I fear it is a trend which will not quickly reverse.

The older I get, the harder it is to make -- and then keep -- plans. The Muppet, Fred the Dread and me are all good pals, yet I have never been to the Muppet's new house nor he to mine. Fred the Dread has notched up two visits (both unannounced) while I have travelled to him just the once. Work commitments are the feeble, but very much real, excuses we all offer.

It will be even worse when we have families.

Keeping friends when you're approaching 30 is hard. Making new ones is even worse.