A while ago, I took the kids out for one of those spontaneous ‘fun days out’ that turned out to be anything but. My only consolation was that we ended up near a place to eat and, recalling the events of the day, I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to eat food that was probably going to shorten my lifespan by a few years.

As we were waiting for our food to arrive, a group of young (late teens/early twenties) sat at the table adjacent to ours. One was pouring her heart out to the others about boyfriend trouble. Something along the lines of:

‘Oh, I just don’t think I could forgive him for this.’

‘It just hurts so much!’

‘But we’ve been together so long, how can I just throw it all away?’

‘I wish I could walk away, but I just love him so much!’

‘Blah, blah, boo hoo!’

Amid all her dramatic proclamations of love and tears of sorrow, her two friends were trying their best to console her. They had perfected the look of wistful sympathy that anyone telling a tale of woe wants to see from their confidants (as much as eyebrows that come courtesy of a stencil allow anyway) and one even shed an empathetic tear.

Cue a flurry of tearful sobs, claims of him not deserving her and lots of hugs.

In the middle of the tears, the waiter delivered the mocktails they had ordered. At this point, all was forgotten and all 3 simultaneously took out their phones, took a picture of their drinks and (I presume) added them to social media, before putting their phones on the table and continuing to discuss their heartbreak, like this was just a natural course of action.

Because, clearly, it doesn’t matter what tragedy befalls you, it pales into insignificance when there is a possibility that your beverage may go ‘unshared’.

So, I am sharing mine.

After all, if your drink doesn’t have your toddler’s grubby pasta fingerprints all over it, is it even worth sharing?