Dialogue: Queuing up for a bit of female bonding

By ROANNE PARKER

As three of us headed off to pick up a bottle of wine last night I stopped to wonder why it is that women feel the need to do things in groups. Any one of us was more than capable of getting the drink on our own, but no, off we trotted in trio.

Whether it's shopping or peeing, if there is any opportunity to avoid doing it alone, or even worse, being the one left behind, we take it with two hands. Birds with full bladders flock together.

Why do we do it? Is it in case our girlfriends say rude things about our new dress? No, I can't believe it's that inane. Does it go much deeper - is it some evolutionary tug? Maybe women simply had to stick together way back when to protect each other from marauding woolly mammoths or club-wielding cavemen.

Do we all really need to reapply our lipstick at the same time? Do we think we might be outdone if one woman has glossy lips and ours has worn off? One of the guys last night opined that the bathroom designers had it wrong. Urinals, he said, were obviously invented for women so we could all go simultaneously. I think he's on to something.

It's possible that it is more to do with being abandoned to the blokes. I certainly don't want to be the one left making wild attempts at informed conversation with guys intent on dissecting the entire NPC season try by try. C'mon guys, surely you'd rather hear about what my darling 6-year-old said the other day about getting her ears pierced? Or how about that Jamie Oliver? Isn't he a hard case in that TV ad?

The blokes were in their element last night. Let me paint you a picture: new bar room under the house, with exposed brick fireplace converted to a shrine to Sky TV; row of upturned spirits with genuine nip-pourer accessories, great slab of kauri polished to a mirror finish and all but invisible beneath row upon row of Heineken.

It gets better: enormous leather chesterfield couches, and a coffee table groaning under piles of Ralph magazines (mental note: possibly so named because "Ralph" is noise wife makes when she sees said magazines); dartboard on the wall, opposite framed poster of whisky bottle labels; and, of course, in the centre of it all the big beautiful pool table.

While the boys spun in wide-eyed circles unsure of what to play with first, the lady of the house suggested we might like to escape this den of testosterone and join her in the spa. Hence the trip to get another bottle of wine.

What a beautiful thing it was to sit under the showery sky and talk girly stuff. No subject is sacred when the women are in the spa. If I tell you what we discussed you are not to roll your eyes - it is all pretty typical, and I make no apologies.

Well of course we talked about how size does matter. And we talked about how great it is to get free gift packs, and how we happily buy cosmetics we don't really need to get yet another makeup bag filled with little delights. How fantastic facials really are, especially when they do a shoulder massage, too.

How much you love your first baby. How guilty you feel when you leave him at daycare. How guilty you feel about leaving work at 5 pm to pick him up on time. How you never take a lunch break, to make up for it.

How much you want to punch your mother-in-law sometimes. How you never want to be with someone who doesn't want you just as much. How a man can make a quick beer after work last eight hours, especially when you are pregnant.

How we can look back at 10 years of adulthood and start to see reasons and patterns and ourselves more clearly. How two friends are having affairs and, when everyone seems to be getting divorced, having one child feels less risky than having more. And so on.

After two hours the chlorine started to eat through the top layers of epidermis and it was time to return to the den, where the blokes were locked in battle after battle and all were determined to win, at everything, at all costs, and loving it.

Ah, it seems it's an individual sport, being a bloke. They can keep their urinals; I'd rather queue. After all, there's lipstick to reapply and a good old chat to be had.