Being good means being imperfect

I just came back from a weekend away with my friend Denise. We were shopping and, as it happened, escaping the world cup. Cheltenham was full of women. Women on their own, shopping in that very focussed way that the truly committed shopper has; women in pairs, like us, walking and talking at the same time and still managing to pick things out for ourselves and each other (we can do that, boys, we're female); and gangs of women of all ages, hen parties of twenty-somethings and raucous covens in their sixties. It was wonderful - such a sense of unspoken camaraderie. A glorious day, the cafe terraces were all full of women in sunglasses smiling and laughing. Occasionally a collective Aaaah! or OOOOoooooh! would emanate from the door of a dark and smoky pub and you could feel all the women congratulating each other for being female and out in the sunshine, rather than male and festering in a dingy, odoriferous cavern, peering over a hundred bald pates through a fug of smoke at a tiny, grainy TV screen.

And in the evening we went back to our hotel (weekend deal), had a great meal, laughed, drank loads of wine, laughed and carried on talking. And probably being slightly indiscreet and drinking and smoking too much and not worrying too much about it. Talked so much, indeed, that when we asked the waiter the time, he reported it was three in the morning. What a result! We had one more drink and hurried to bed, still laughing.

On the Sunday we found a spot by the river near a pub, had lunch, drank soft drinks (teeny hangoverette) and read the papers for hours until the wind picked up, then went to Hay-on-Wye, browsed the second-hand book shops in amicable silence, picked up a few books and headed home.

All in all a brilliant weekend.

It made me think about laughter in life. I notice that it is with others of their own gender that people really loosen up and laugh. I love Martin, but he and I never laugh in that side-splitting, jaw-stretching, disabling way that I laugh with my friends. I doubt that I raise the same responses in him as a really beery night in the pub with the 'boys' (all of whom are in their forties) can loose. People need to be with their own gender - they are liberated by their sameness, by the lack of confusion and suspicion that the opposite sex engenders. And if I'm anything to go by, when they are restored to their families, they feel fond, their affection and intimacy renewed by a little bit of rope, and by a sliver of guilt that we might, possibly, have spilled more beans that was entirely a good thing...