It's always a pleasure to come across him. He's a large, bluff young man, courteous and helpfully good-natured. His profession seems a natural fit for him, as an local fireman. He laughed yesterday, telling us he's on 'vacation', since it almost seems to him as though he's working part-time. That, because he has four days 'off' this week. A result of working two back-to-back 24-hour shifts.

He always has with him not only his own two middling-sized terriers, the white one which used to be standoffish, the calico one that always greeted us with wild enthusiasm, and a neighbour's chocolate Lab. Yesterday that chocolate Lab, which had initially been fairly wildly obstreperous when our friend first began bringing him out for ravine walks, was wild with happiness, to be out there, in the ravine. Our fireman-friend admitted that he'd been somewhat lax, not having invited him with for several days previous to the present.

He'd had his furnace conk out on him earlier in the week and had been busy as well with other matters. One of his professional colleagues who used to repair furnaces for a living, had hied himself right over and saved him the bother and expense of a new furnace, by handily repairing the old one. We too, my husband told him, have the original furnace that had been installed in our house. As far as we know, all of our neighbours have had to replace their original furnaces. We'd been told the firebox in our model is known for its longevity. Let him know, said our friend, when we needed to change our furnace; his colleague would be glad to do the work required and wouldn't charge much.

This wasn't the first time this young man guided us to a preferred option. It was he last winter who described for us the animal hospital at Ogdensburg, New York, where we ended up taking Jack and Jill to be neutered and spayed using laser technique, at an affordable cost. The people at the clinic were obliging and kind, and we felt we'd placed our two puppies in skilled hands. Their online profile had been reassuring, and our experience with them indicated that the positive reviews were well deserved.

It's impossible to think of our friend as being anything but upbeat and good-natured. His natural response to anything anyone mentions, is agreement, perhaps topped up with his own opinion closely aligned to what you feel yourself. A more accommodatingly pleasant person would be hard to find. I've told him he looks different than he had a few years back, and he laughed when I said that months ago, telling me he attributed the difference to working out at the gym; he looks leaner, his face in particular.

Unsaid is the fact that he's no longer with his long-time partner. They had a parting of the ways almost a year ago, their mother told us in a rare encounter last summer, with great regret. So although he is in a profession which tends to result in close-knit, collegial relationships, it's hard for people when they're in long-term stable relationships to suddenly find themselves wondering where that stability went, leaving them bereft of intimate companionship, and lonely.