Blink

On Monday night I found myself at Dukes 92 for after work "networking". It was one of those evenings that you say you'll pop in for half an hour and you end up being the last one to leave after one too many JD's. In theory the event was only supposed to last an hour or so - the organisation I work for had arranged pre-show drinks for a select few before they embraced the magnificent Manchester International Festival's The Pianist.

Once the pizza and free wine had vanished so did the select few, leaving two friends and I who didn't have tickets to get drunk and put the world to rights. We stayed until the bitter end and when we were asked to leave for the second time we decided it was only proper to finish the night at mine with a bottle of JD.

Yesterday morning my friend texted me to ask why we had talked incessantly about men - we had tried to analyse the behaviour of at least three of the lesser sex and by the end of the night we were no further forward in understanding why men want to share a barge party with you one night, and then stand you up the next. I didn't have an answer for her. We are three independent women with fabulous careers, personalities and lifestyles. Why couldn't we find something else to talk about?

The answer came to me last night whilst reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink." In it, he talks about two female taste testers who have broken Oreo cookies down to 90 different attributes that they can distinguish between with any one taste. If we can break biscuits down into 90 categories no the hell wonder we have trouble fathoming out our male counterparts.