Okay, I know this is a topic I write about a lot. But it is near and dear to my heart because not only do I think it is hard to live a Single life without friends, I think it is hard to live a Married life without friends. Benedict Ambrose is a marvellous husband, but the one thing he cannot be is a female friend. He has not yet grasped the principles of female solidarity, and he is prone to give advice when I don't want advice but womanly sympathy and total agreement that I am right and somebody else is wrong. But that's okay. He's a man. If he weren't a man, I wouldn't be here in the Historical House making scalloped potatoes and hanging up socks on a laundry line made from a computer cable.
One feminine ritual I absolutely love is called "Coffee". In Canada we call this "Tea", but in Scotland "Tea" can mean "Supper," so here we tend to say "Coffee" if we mean warm beverage plus cake, not a full meal. Yesterday a female friend came over for coffee, and we had a nice chat. Then this morning I walked over the fields to my neighbours' for coffee, and the female neighbour and I had champagne and a nice chat and then lunch with her husband. And on Thursday I will meet other female friends for several cups of tea in a teashop. Female friendship involves a lot of hot drinks these days.
Another thing about female friendship is that you eventually begin making friends with women much older and much younger than yourself. I was in university for a very long time indeed, so I tended to make friends much younger than myself. But now that I am a married lady in the UK, I am making friends with ladies much older than myself, too. And this is a very good thing because sometimes I need advice about living in the U.K. that only British ladies know, e.g. where can a girl get her hair done well?
That is all I have to say today, so I will take the wrappings off the commbox and let you all chat about what you and your friends do for fun. Before I married and still lived in Toronto, I enjoyed going to pyjama parties although I was by far the oldest guest and fell asleep before everyone else.
7 comments:
My favorite thing to do with my female friends is get a (literal) cup of coffee or a meal or a dessert together and just gab. I really appreciate my married friends who are willing to leave their kids home with their husbands to spend a little girl time with me. (Thanks to the servant-hearted husbands, too!)
I have some friends who love to sew. They have taught me how to sew, and we have a little sewing circle together making handmade gifts for the children in our lives. Fun times!
This Friday, one of my best girlfriends is going with me to a "chocolate spa." We're going to have facials and taste chocolate. We're around the same age, but she's married. We still have so much in common and find so much to talk about (including her marriage, my current dating life and her life as a single in the past-tense) that fortunately, it hasn't created any real barriers like it has when some of my other friends have gotten married.
I used to not think this way, but as I've gotten older, I've really learned to appreciate the value of female friendships and abandoned (for the most part) my preference of the company of my platonic male friends.
*gasp* WHERE is this chocolate spa of which you speak???
Yes, Lemons! Come back and tell us more about this chocolate spa.
Amy, the gabbing and sewing sounds great fun!
But how much chocolate do you actually get to eat? Is this one those spas where chocolate is actually an ingredient in the spa treatments? Because those always seemed a little disappointing to me.
Charlie Miller on the street near St George's West (Stafford St?) - India or Jason, if they've not moved.
Just recently I went out for "coffee" for the first time. I am 20, the Lovely and Brilliant BFF is 21. We drove ourselves and paid for our own drinks (cider and hot chocolate respectively) and spent 2.5 hours feeling very grown-up as we yaddered on about our lives. Then our mothers called us and said we needed to come home for dinner.
Baking is also fun. Especially if you get to eat the fruits of your labor. But last fall I helped a friend make lemon bars for a mission-trip fundraiser and it was jolly fun even though I only got a few licks of lemony filling. This is the friend with whom I did NaNoWriMo, so we read excerpts of our novels as we were baking. Before that, we had a couple of times holed up at "the Pub" (in the student center place) with our laptops and had word wars. I once wrote 4,500 words in 2.5 hours because she was there to egg me on.
Good times, those.
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