Ladies Who Supper With Me

Had supper with my three best (female) friends from university last night in...well it took me approx two hours to get there, and am still not sure where it was, although it claims to be in London.

But it was worth the journey to see them. They are all grown up with children - or about to have children - so we talked about grown up stuff like how hairy that Harry Potter actor is, how much American people suck, whether or not horses really know if you are scared of them, and people not being allowed to do their own stunts in films any more. (One of my friends is dating an actor, who was there to give us insight into the stunt thing. Apparently no-one does their own stunts anymore. Not even James Bond.) All very gentle, engaging stuff. It was like being back at university, except the food was better and we all seem to have found out who we want to be in love with. It was a deeply relaxing evening (except for the equally long journey back home).

I was wondering if it would have been the same if it had been three of my male university chums? I guess the conversation would have been a little more combative and competitive, and we would have talked less about stretchy pregnancy pants. And we would have probably drunk more, and talked about music and women in some shape or form. (I'm not going on a Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus thing here. I don't do that. I think that sort of thinking gets people looking for differences rather than similarities. It's like horoscopes, and oysters.) And we - as men - would have probably been a bit more aggressive to the actor (or actress to continue the gender bend theory), and demanded that he/she tell us stories about anyone famous they had ever worked with/argued with/had to kiss on stage. So it would have been a different evening.

Anyway, I came away from my evening with a - probably deeply inappropriate - feeling of well-being for my three female friends as mothers and mothers to be. It was just really nice to see my friends on their own, nattering about their kids and their lives, and swapping - mostly complete bollox - theories on life. (The best ones were about the fact that you could not be a good food critic if you don't drink, and that men get depressed because they have enough time on their hands to do so.) I often watch groups of people in restaurants. The men are looking at the women, the women are trying to ignore the men, the men want to fight each other, the women want to be each other. There was absolutely none of that last night. It was the sort of evening I used to watch my parents having...oh, bugger, this is about getting old isn't it.

Oh well. Had to happen at some point I guess.