Bitches, besties and the female clique

When I was a teenager, I was one of the Sydenham Six. While the label would be more fitting for a band of fugitives than a collective of girls from the same school, the meaning it imparted was nonetheless immediate: we were a clique. 

The rise of the box set

‘What shall we do this evening?’ asks my husband. It’s 8pm on Monday, supper is over and ahead of us stretch a few blissful hours of freedom. ‘Scrabble?’ he adds, ‘Some garden planning? Or holiday video editing?’ 

‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ I bluff, ‘you choose.’ In light of all the useful things we could be doing, who’s going to take responsibility for doing absolutely nothing? Tonight, neither of us is in any danger of opting to decide on the best spot for the garden pond or plotting for a triple word score. It’s been a long Monday and all day, at the back of my mind has been the thought that once the kids are in bed, the kitchen’s clear, lunches packed for tomorrow and stove blazing, we’ll slump into the sofa, each welcome a cat onto our laps and melt into an episode of our current DVD series. Ah – what a gloriously cosy, united way to distance reality on a winter evening.