‘What I love about being a journalist is that I get the chance to meet so many different people,’ a friend said recently. I’d mentioned a recent interview I’d had for an editor role for a new, unconventional website. ‘Are you still on schedule to launch next month?’ I’d asked.
‘I don’t believe in schedules,’ he replied. It turned out that he didn’t believe in governments, NGOs or me, either.

Meeting people from all walks of life should make one more open-minded, but I’ve found myself making or agreeing with sweeping generalisations more and more recently. Of course, it is a lot more acceptable to make sweeping generalisations if you fall into the sexual orientation/racial/gender category that you are talking about. ‘Sorry – I’m running on black time,’ my friend of Nigerian parentage often says when she arrives late.
‘Even the Irish have moved out of Cricklewood,’ a friend from Cork once joked.
‘Women can’t physically work your long hours,’ I told Hot Danish recently. ‘I’m better at spending money than earning it,’ I’ve also been known to say to him on more than one occasion.

My friend Monique is well travelled and also has the rare ability to effortlessly make people of every background feel at ease. My musings on gender equality and flirting in last week’s blog had caught her attention, ‘While the incompetence in the flirting stakes may be analogous with women’s equality with men, I think it is more a cultural thing,’ she said. ‘Englishmen are hugely playful with words and therefore with flirting, as we see it. I lived for a year in Italy and only one man engaged in a joust such as the sort you’re referring to. It was in an Italian delicatessen. Many others looked on appreciatively but none took up the baton – that’s why I love England so much.’