According to a recent survey, women gossip for five hours a day. Is that all? Sometimes it feels like we never do anything else. In order to see how long we actually do gossip for, Lucy Cavendish decided to keep a gossip diary. The results amazed her - and might surprise you, too...
8AM
I am just settling down with the newspapers and a cup of coffee when the telephone rings. It’s my single friend, Susie. She often rings at this time of day because she likes to have a quick chat on her way to work.
Our conversations usually centre on one thing: ours and other people’s love lives.
Over the past few weeks we’ve been talking about her crush on this man she’s met. We have talked about this man so much I feel I know him better than my husband.
But, today, Susie wants to talk about her friend, Julia, who is having an affair. We’ve both become obsessed with Julia’s affair.
Julia gets up to all sorts of things, things that Susie and I never do (although I think Susie would like to).
“She had sex with him in the back of his wife’s car,” Susie tells me today.
“God, that’s horrible,” I say. We then move on to our usual discussion about whose behaviour is worse; his because he is married or hers because, although she is single, she knows he is married.
We go on and on about the fact it’s not sisterly towards the other woman, why Julia would want to date a married man anyway, and what she gets up to with her lover.
We’re like ghouls. We gloat on the good times and the bad times. Julia’s life is akin to a soap opera.
“She bumped into his wife,” says Susie. “She had just parked the car. That’s how Julia knew it was her.”
“No!” I say.
“Well, she didn’t talk to her. She just walked past. Then she said she couldn’t help herself but follow the wife all round the town.”
Susie then gives me the latest update from her love life. As usual, this tends to go on for ever. I want to tell Susie what’s been happening in my life, but she’s going on about how the man she has a crush on has been texting her every day. She then reads out every text and starts to analyse every word. I keep on trying to interrupt, but she’s having none of it.
“What do you think he means by, ‘take care’?” she asks me.
I sigh. “I don’t know,” I say.
Meanwhile, my eldest son Raymond comes in to the room and I do a pretend yawn as I hold the phone away from my ear.
Eventually, after an hour, Susie signs off with a “see you tonight!”
“Are you really seeing her tonight?” Raymond, 15, asks, looking somewhat puzzled, when I say the same in reply.
“Yes,” I say.
“So why have you spent so long on the phone to her?” he asks. “Especially if you think she’s so boring.” Then he walks off muttering.
TIME GOSSIPING: 40 minutes
10am
I have just settled down to do some work when my mother rings. “Ooh,” she says. “I saw Sarah with little Joe the other day. I must say that boy looks paler and paler every time I see him. Do you think there’s something wrong with him?”
“I’ve never seen Joe in my life,” I say.
“Don’t worry,” my mother says. “I told Sarah how well you are doing.”
I used to go to school with Sarah and she was my nemesis. She always beat me at exams and always got the best part in any drama production.
As I have moved back to where I grew up, partly to be near my mother, I am also near Sarah who never left this part of the Home Counties. I avoid Sarah like the plague, but my mother, who is nice to Sarah’s face but terribly rude about her behind her back, sees her quite a lot.
“I never fail to tell her how successful you are,” says my mother, “and that you lived in Manhattan.”
“That was a decade ago,” I say.
“Still,” my mother says defensively. “Sarah’s never been anywhere.
“Do you know that her son does nothing but scream?”
We then discuss the screaming son for at least 20 minutes. By the end, we’ve decided Sarah must be seriously lacking in maternal skills.
TIME GOSSIPING: 30 minutes
11AM
My next-door neighbour knocks on the door. I make some coffee and we start talking about everyone in the village.
“Do you know that Greg and Lisa are having an extension done?” she asks.”I didn’t think they had any money!” I say. We then talk for another half-an-hour about people who say they have no money and then somehow, miraculously, manage to go on holiday and build extensions.
“I’d never do anything like that,” my neighbour says. I then spend half-an-hour on Facebook and Twitter catching up with all my friends, but I can’t stop thinking about Greg and Lisa and how they’re paying for their extension. Did they win the lottery and just not tell anyone?
TIME GOSSIPING: One hour
1PM
My friend Eva pops in for a sandwich looking embarrassed. Her face is a strange shade of red. “I’ve had a peel,” she says. Then she says she’s also had the exfoliating treatment Microdermobrasion.
“Don’t tell anyone!” she hisses. We spend the next half-an-hour discussing the pros and cons of cosmetic surgery. “All those celebrities have it done,” she says.
Eva has a few celebrity magazines with her. We look at all their faces and then spend an hour or so analysing who has had what work done. “I’m sure she’s had everything done!” she says, looking at a picture of Elizabeth Hurley.
We then muse on why Liz is going out with Shane Warne and who we would go out with if we were Liz Hurley. I say I’d go back to Hugh Grant. Eva thinks she should be dating Colin Firth, even though he’s married.
We then discuss Susie, with whom Eva is also friends. “Don’t you think she’s only interested in herself and no one else?” Eva asks. “Yes!” I say.
I then tell her how we’d spent an hour on the phone this morning discussing the text messages from her crush. “She went on and on about it,” I say. “Typical,” says Eva. It’s only then we notice that Raymond has walked in to the kitchen.
“I thought Susie was your friend,” he says after Eva leaves. “She is,” I say.
“But you’re so two-faced about her,” he says. “Oh, it’s only gossip!” I say. “All women do it!” “Do they?” he says darkly.
TIME GOSSIPING: One hour
4PM
Time for a cup of tea. I take myself off to the local coffee shop and am just settling down with a piece of work when I realise I know the woman sitting in the booth next to me. I say hello and we sit together and spend an hour talking about our weight. We then gossip about all the other mothers at the school gate.
“Lydia should go on a diet,” the school-gate woman says. “Have you seen the size of her? Her kids are huge!”
We spend a further half-an-hour discussing what size clothes we wear, what size we think everyone else wears (we think Lydia is a size 18) and what size we’d like to be.
Then she says: “Anna’s a size 8. An eight is too small isn’t it?” I nod in agreement. She offers me the remaining quarter of her chocolate muffin.
TIME GOSSIPING: 40 minutes
7PM
Susie comes round for dinner. “Did you know Eva’s had a face peel?” I ask her. But she’s barely listening. As soon as she comes in, she brandishes her BlackBerry at me.
“Look what he’s just sent me!’ she says. We then start pouring over her mobile, deciphering texts. “What do you think this means?” she says, showing me a text that asks: “Drink next week?”’
“I think it means a drink next week,” I say. “Right,” says Susie frowning a bit. We then spend an entire evening discussing her crush. Does he like her or doesn’t he? Should she see him or shouldn’t she? We start Googling things like “rules of Dating” on Susie’s laptop. The next thing we know, it’s 11pm.
“That was a great night,” Susie says happily as she goes out of the door. I nod in agreement. On my way upstairs I bump into Raymond, who shoots me a poisonous glare.
“You and your friends are pathetic,” he says. “No wonder men say they can never understand women. How can you talk about such rubbish all the time? You’ll rot your brain.” Oh, what does he know? I think, brushing past him.
TIME GOSSIPING: Four hours
PSSST!
Now I knew I gossiped a lot, but even I was surprised by my grand total of seven hours and 50 minutes of gossiping in one ordinary day. But what a good day it was!
I went to bed feeling completely satisfied and excited by life - and dozed off happily thinking of everyone I had talked about that day. Men might say they don’t understand women and why we gossip. But, as far as my friends and I are concerned, it’s what makes the world go round. - Daily Mail