You know what else works… watching great films from the 90s with huge american sized mugs of tea and flapjack cookies, with a blanket over you and your school friends legs in one of their living rooms. Or laughing so hard at a story in outdoor hot tub, you throw your head forward in a fit of giggles and face plant the water…and you actually love it.

I have just spent 24 hours with some of my school friends and I needed it.

I needed the outdoor woodburning hot tub… thanks Paus in Cambridge.

I needed the ease of conversation about what toiletries/make up we have found useful (this all came from the others…I just listened…FYI my toiletries bag consisted of toothbrush and paste, sudocreme, antiperspirant, a plaster, a panty liner, paracetamol and some germaloids cream (spesh…thats the gift that keeps giving after having a baby). We chatted and laughed about our lives, our relationships, money and we struggled as we talked about things that aren’t easy to say aloud even when you love people/or maybe more so when you love people?!

We took photos…including me insisting on a selfie…it didn’t work out well…it was like the photbooth pictures we used to take on shopping trips when we were 12 and trying to cram our 5 faces into a small square on the screen. You know the ones you get when you keep trying because you’re unhappy with the shot and then your time runs out and it takes it for you.

We reminisced on past holidays and nights out and boyfriends…and tried to plan new adventures.

We admitted that we found adulting hard, it is hard.

We poured wine and water and tea and coffee for each other, and passed chocolate and toast and marshmallows around.

We googled what had happened to familiar faces we loved from those 90s films and TV shows who had once decorated our magazines and minds and now were like legit middle aged people who now were doing shows we hadn’t heard of (that is not a mark on their success…maybe just more our current TV watching…although in my case I am a fan of crap TV so maybe it is an endorsement for their success?)

These girls have been there, these women are still there.

And boy, do they know a good spa!