As you get older, it doesn't become harder to make new friends. It just becomes a little less necessary. But when it happens, when a connection is made almost despite yourself, it's no less exciting than it was when you were nine.

'Check it out,' he suddenly says, pointing. 'A piano!'

'Yes!' I say. 'A piano!'

'Come on ...' he says, getting up, and I follow him towards it. This is brilliant, I am thinking. We're going to go and look at a piano! Why do I never get up and look at pianos with any of my normal friends? Perhaps we have lost the magic of friendship. Maybe we have grown complacent, and it has taken a new friend to make me realise this.

David sits down at the piano and starts to play a little tune. It's good.

'I didn't know you could play the piano!' I say, in a way that suggests I am utterly shocked that there could be something in his biography that was unknown to me. And then I realise I shouldn't be that shocked, given that just a few hours before I didn't even know for sure if he had a face.

'Oh, yeah!' he says, and he begins to play harder, and more elaborately. A girl looks over and smiles.

'There's a girl looking at you and smiling!' I say, and David laughs.

'The food of love!' he says. He is very wise. It was about time I had a wise friend, I decide. I deserve one.

I smile and shake my head, and wander to a nearby sofa and sit down to patiently listen. Anything seems possible now. We are two new friends embarking on a wonderful journey of surprises together. David continues to play until the song is finished, and then he pauses for a moment, before starting another one entirely.

Oh! I think. He's doing another one.

It takes a moment or two for me to realise that this one is a love song. It is gentle, and romantic, and a couple at the far end of the bar look deep into each other's eyes.

That's nice, I think. David is being gregarious and talented, and it is uniting people.

And then David looks over at me and smiles. I smile back and raise my wine glass in his direction, as if to say, 'Well done, my new friend, on being gregarious and talented and uniting people!'

And then I look back towards the bar. An elderly couple smile at me. I smile back, and the lady squeezes her husband's hand. They are clearly affected by the music. I feel proud that my friend - my friend! - is doing this. He finishes the tune. I start to stand up to welcome him back but he begins another one and so I sit down again.