There comes a point in every friendship ecosystem when someone suggests starting a book group. It’s a beautiful moment, the platonic modern equivalent of the 1950s “shall we go steady?” It means you want to see one another at least every six weeks, preferably on a fixed day in the calendar, so that when someone tries to pinch that day for another, less interesting thing, you can in perpetuity reply: “I can’t, I have book group.” Since nobody ever disbands a book group, it is adult‑speak for “friends for ever”, which, if you stare at it hard enough, is almost tearjerking.
So, anyway, this poignant moment arrived with my newish friends R and S, then immediately hit the road hump that none of us wanted to read a book. Nothing against books, guys, it’s just I am generally reading something weird that I wouldn’t want to impose on you. S suggested a poem group; R nixed that. I said maybe we could read Poems on the Underground while we were on the underground on our way to the poem group. That was nixed, too.
R, scratching for something shorter than a poem, shorter even than a poem on the tube, suggested a text group: we get together and read each other’s problematic texts. Is this passive-aggressive or aggressive-aggressive, or have I misunderstood completely? Does “I’ll see you soon” mean they’ll see me soon? What does this emoji mean? Yes, yes, I know what a heart is, but why is it yellow? Who would like to see this relationship breakdown in 312 parts? Can you believe what my sibling has said? Well, you have to, it’s right here in black and white.
The only foreseeable flaw is that once every six weeks won’t be anything like frequent enough.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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