When women claim that they have only guy friends because all female-kind is “bitchy” (or for some other inane reason), I listen with incredulity. I’ve been nurtured in an ocean of oestrogen and, with repect to friendships with women, all I can say is “Go Girl”. There’s nothing quite like collapsing into giggling fits with your girlfriends over nothing in particular … and watching a sense of gangly awkwardness spread across a guy’s face when he assumes we’re laughing at him or (worse still) twittering to attract his attention.

It isn’t like I intentionally created a Great Wall of China replica between myself and Adam’s progeny. It just so happened that my parents enrolled me in a school chock-a-block with convent girls, redolent with nuns with sour expressions and shiny crucifixes, and teachers with long oily braids. When it came to choosing an undergraduate course, I took the venturesome step of joining Women’s Christian College – a damsel domain only metres from the hallowed portals of my convent school. The chance to break free came in graduate school. Here I was, a nubile girl spreading her academic wings in the US of A. My mom packed me off with fish pickle, a Hawkins pressure cooker and warnings that American men spike drinks (yes, even if its just orange juice). However, I never did stumble across the 6’ 3”, dark and alluringly menacing man hunkering in the hallways. In my class of 25, there were 5 boys in all. Two had girlfriends, two were gay and the fifth one could have been a field mouse in his previous avatar. While none of them made the Mr Right cut, they were perfect guy bonding material. But, unlike the average American guy, my passions did not include burping-the-alphabet contests or salsa-ing after downing a 6-pack of Budweiser.

Currently, I’m staying in a girl-infested house…16 of us, to be precise. Yes, there’s some unbelievable backbiting and frigid cold wars without any hope of forging peace pacts. But, post-midnight gossip sessions, finding comraderie in common grouses about cellulite, and uncomplicated giggling makes it all worthwhile. Ewe … that definitely borders on pretty-in-pink cutesyness. I couldn’t care less.