I don’t give the final payment to the builder myself, as I’m sick of his creepiness and don’t want to let him into the house again. I make my husband hand over final envelope of cash at our front door, knowing he’s not been bred with any compunction to let someone in when they request it; to let someone put their arm around his shoulders momentarily, repeatedly, when they discuss plans for a business transaction; to let that paid transaction include any conversation about where my husband should sit in his garden and what swimwear he should be sporting when he does it.

The builder thanks me for the payment by text, then, 24 hours later – having clearly given it some thought – he texts me to say that, after we’ve paid him thousands of pounds to work on our house, maybe I just want to let him know if I want a hug. Winky face.

After several hours where I do some thinking of my own, I eventually reply that his message is creepy and inappropriate, and I block him. It feels good, compared to all the times, day after day after day after day, where I don’t say anything, too stunned in the instance, or too wary of consequences because of where I am and how drunk the men seem. Not all men, obviously: just the men I encounter at the supermarket, on the train, on a run, on the library shelves, on TV, in the newspapers, in parliament, in my local cinema listings, at social events, and online.

At lunch with friends, we talk about the terrible men we work with. Bosses who tell us to cancel our IVF as it’s something we’ll regret once landed with a screaming kid. Bosses who take all the young skinny white boys out for breakfasts, then send emails to their bosses insisting they should be fast-tracked for promotion. Bosses who tell us our own promotions are mistakes, our plans are wrong, our ambitions are foolish.

We talk about you, I want to say to those men. We all know what you’re like. You’re ridiculous. And you make the world worse.

At a PTA breakfast, other friends talk about trouble their daughters are having at school amongst their friendship group. Well, you know how mean girls can be! they say. I say, Look at us, guys! How great are we! I say, The friendship of the women in my life are the most valuable friendships I have. Men are hot garbage. Women are kind and hilarious and understanding and way more interesting. Don’t teach your daughters to hate each other already. Women are the best! Show your daughters how great girls are! If more girls learnt how fucking cool women are, we could make the world a trillion times better!

I am amazed I am still invited to these breakfasts, to be fair.

May 23, 2016

‘You must be a nightmare to live with.’

I blink at the woman next to me, thinking a) I beg your pardon? and b) how the hell did you know that?

It takes me a moment, fighting through feverish memory-resets and the ceramic echoing-ringing-ears of this flu-ish bug, to remember we were halfway through talking about this flu-ish bug, the same one that she had had, the one that hangs around for two weeks, she tells me. She was, she says. I totally am, I think. I laugh harder than I have in days, blushing at how truly nightmarish I am at the moment, and hoping desperately that this laughter doesn’t tip me over the edge into actual vomiting because I have to come here every week for at least two more months, or whenever the older two kids can swim without armbands, whichever comes first.

I’ve been thinking recently about this piece on Nora Ephron’s way of befriending people, and have been kicking myself for still not having my business cards made, months after I’d had them designed. The number of times I’ve wanted to platonically ask someone out, and lacked the props, in both senses of the word.

But this dizziness, this nausea, this need to grind my teeth together so I don’t fall forwards from the narrow bench while we watch the children swim back and forth together, turns out is all I needed to swallow my self-consciousness. Right at the start of the lesson I start talking to this woman - who, let’s face it, next to my sticking-up hair (napped next to the baby) and my smudged eyeliner (sweats) and my face like a haunted bag of tiling grout, is waaaaay out of my friendship league today - and end up wishing again that I’d got my business cards printed up already, because, to lie down with a passive-aggressive groan and a Berocca-stained old blanket in Patrick Bateman’s shadow, they might be the most impressive thing about me right now.