One fine night

On Sunday I had the kind of evening that reminded me how positively brilliant being female can be. A group of my closest girlfriends here came over for a very casual dinner. It was always going to be a bit special because two of the girls, who lived here the year before, were in town from Sydney and Amsterdam, respectively. They arrived before seven and we sat chatting between enormous helpings of food, until almost midnight. If it weren't for flights, real life and Monday morning looming, the conversation could have flowed unabated until today.

We dissected topics from body image, grief, clothes, new relationships, old relationships, marriage, work, blogs, discrimination, babies, food and just about everything else in between. But the thing is, and this is where my gratitude for being female springs, those things weren't just mentioned. They were talked about meaningfully. Not in a contrived sense, but in an effortless, sincere and funny sense. I love that five girls, living five different realities, can deliberate and share the tragic, the delicate, the intimate and the completely benign, alongside considerable laughter and the occasional tear, without drawing breath. And, best of all, can walk away from the table feeling slightly less burdened by their nuisances du jour. At least I did, and I suspect the others did too. As the adage goes, a problem shared is a problem halved. For me, that represents the real joy of being female. Or maybe that's the real joy of having good friends. In either case, it was a lovely night.

One less delicate subject we considered was the start of a blog. Specifically, this one. Having spent much of my time here bemoaning my far-too-short writing career, combined with the fact I love to write and I write all the time, it was kindly pointed out that not blogging was a bit ridiculous. My only response as to why I wasn't doing so already was fear. And frankly, when verbalised that didn't seem overly persuasive. So, it was decided that I would blog some of what I bash away on the keyboard, starting now.