It turns out Martin Scorcese and Robbie Robertson meet every Thanksgiving to reminisce about The Last Waltz.

They became friends when Scorcese agreed to film the documentary of The Band’s farewell concert, on Thanksgiving Day 1976. I’m glad they stay in touch. It upsets me is that they only manage to catch up once a year. Though it doesn’t surprise me.

We all have the friend who manages to keep in constant contact with absolutely everybody they’ve ever met. (What are they doing when they’re not meeting for coffee or working their way through the phone book?)

The rest of us manage to stay in touch with those that we are physically close to.

• So I check in with my wife about six times a day, sometimes more, and face-to-face every evening. Occasionally in a restaurant.
• I'm lucky to live down the road from my sister so I see her every week.
• My brother, a farmer in the Cotswolds, I’m lucky if I see him three times a year. Same with my folks in Derbyshire.
• My old friends, who got scattered from Moscow to Lausanne, once a year.
• Even those that live in the North of England, or even North London, it can be just once a year.

It’s annoying but it's manageable to stay close, despite the distances.

Imagine what it's like working like that. When I was at Customs they had a massive issue with ‘remote management’. You work at Harwich but your manager’s in Dover.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. We manage it as consultants. I only have one client who's even in the same time zone. But that appointed one hour a week of dedicated, focused, time with just you and them, you get so much out of it.

Actually being physically close to colleagues is handy when it comes to casual, non-intrusive communications. So you can more easily synchronise communicating to times when you can see people are mentally ready to focus.

But it also leads to a lot of 'unnecessary communications'. Or 'having fun'.