Woman's Hour - How to be a good friend, Hairdresser tribunal case, Rock pools

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

In the next of our summer series of practical How to guides, we talk about how to be a good friend. There will be tips on how to make, keep and politely shed friends at different stages in your life. We’ll discuss the tools you need to navigate tricky things like being over or underwhelmed by contact with your friends, and what to do if you don’t like your mate’s partner. Jane is joined by the broadcaster and beauty expert Sali Hughes, the comedian Jenni Eclair whose new book is Older and Wider – A Survivor’s Guide to the Menopause and Radhika Sanghani, a freelance journalist and novelist.A self-employed hairdresser has won the right to claim for notice, holiday and redundancy pay in a case that could affect other workers. An employment tribunal agreed that Meghan Gorman, should be entitled to the benefits of an employee at the salon where she had worked on a self-employed basis. We hear from Meghan and Beth Hale, a Partner specialising in Employment and Partnership law at CM Murray. The environmentalist and educator Heather Buttivant on what wonders you can find in the rockpools of the British coastline, and how to interest children in them. Her new book is called Rock Pool: Extraordinary Encounters Between the Tides : A Life -Long Fascination told in Twenty-Four CreaturesPresenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Dianne McGregor

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and you've come across the Woman's Hour podcast. It's Wednesday the 22nd of July 2020. Hi there, good morning to you. Today, friendship, how to make friends, how to keep friends and how to be a good friend. And your thoughts on that, welcome at BBC Women's Hour on social media. If you're lucky enough to be spending time on the British coast over the summer weeks, rock pools is another topic of conversation this morning. We have a fantastic interviewee on that subject, Heather

Buttervant, who I think it's fair to say knows everything there is to know about the creatures who inhabit our rock pools. So we're going to have a very frank conversation, I have to tell you, about barnacles, limpets, crabs and starfish towards the end of the programme this morning. Also with us, we are talking about the gig economy. This is important, actually. We talked yesterday about retail job losses. Here's another aspect of 21st century British working life. And we're never far from a headline or two about the gig economy and how it's working or not, as the case may be. And this is interesting. A self-employed hairdresser has won the right to claim for notice, holiday and redundancy pay in a case that could affect thousands of other workers. An employment tribunal agreed that Megan Gorman should get the benefits of an employee at the Manchester salon where she had worked on a self-employed basis. We'll have a word with

employment lawyer Beth Hale in a moment or two but first here is Megan. Megan good morning to you. Good morning. Now you were very young when you started work as a hairdresser, you're still in your teens, I think. I was, yes. Yeah, so I guess, like many of us at that time in our life, and you're now only 26, I should say, you didn't really read the small print. I never know, and I think that's a problem with, like, a lot of young people who are going into a profession.

They just get given a legal document to sign and they don't actually read it through or have someone sit down and go through it with them, which I wish it had happened because I maybe thought twice about it. So what actually happened? You were employed as a self-employed hairdresser, but with a contract at this top salon in Manchester. Yes, correct.

And what aspects of all that did work for you? I think obviously I was allowed to take holidays, as well as many holidays as I wanted, which was quite a good thing. I do love a holiday. Who doesn't? But it was just the things, when you started asking for time off, you was questioned. And I took a minute, set times. Were there specific things you had to wear, for example? and I mean, to come in at set times.

Were there specific things you had to wear, for example? Yes, I was only allowed to wear black or white. I wasn't allowed to wear any sort of colour, and if you did, you were told to take it off. Right, that sounds pretty strict to me. And what about the amount of money you made? Well, we had 67% taken off us um which was obviously then they kept and then they just give us our 33% that we'd earned so it's nearly 70% of what you earned was taken by the salon right

yes um in terms of equipment did you bring your own stuff in or were you using what the salon provided? The salon provided the chair, the roof, the products and the colours where we had to buy our own kit, which was like scissors, combs, clips, hair dryers. OK, and your clients, were they your clients, your regulars? Because I've had the same hairdresser for years. Lots of us build up relationships. Or were they people who just came through the door so you had when you qualified you had three months to build up your um clientele and then it was your job then to keep them on obviously have them recommend their friends to you or family members in my contract it actually stated that they were Terence Paul clients, not mine.

So that was another thing that went against them. Right. We should say that's the name of the salon. And we've got a statement from them here. We have received the written reasons for the tribunal's decision, which we are reviewing with our legal representatives. We don't have any further comment to make at this stage. The decision was on a preliminary issue with the main claims yet to be heard. So that's the statement from that salon in Manchester. But you clearly felt, Megan, that you were losing out here.

Absolutely, yes. OK, let's bring in employment lawyer Beth Hale. How much do you know, actually, about the beauty industry, Beth? Because it's a very important area of employment for women. 84% of the employees in the sector are female, but it operates in its own relatively unusual way, I guess, like most industries. Yeah, I think every industry operates in its own individual way,

but I think what the beauty industry has in common with other gig economy-type industries is the insecurity of jobs for these people and the fact that they have contracts which often don't totally reflect the nature of the work that they're doing. So was Megan employed or self-employed? Based on what you've heard, what do you think? Well, I mean, it's very hard to say.

Obviously, I haven't seen her contract, I haven't seen the underlying documentation, but I think a couple of things to say about the particular case. Every case like this will be decided on its particular facts, so congratulations to Megan. I think she's done an amazing job and frankly she's done a great job to take it this far and to get this outcome from the Employment Tribunal.

Because we should actually point out, of course, that's not easy, is it? You're taking quite a chance yeah yeah absolutely um but but i think um you know importantly it was this decision was based on her particular circumstances her particular facts and even someone else employed on the same contract wouldn't necessarily um have the same outcome at an employment tribunal so it's a first instance judgment by an employment tribunal. It doesn't have precedent effect. So it's not binding on any future case. So while it's important and obviously hugely important for Megan,

hugely important for the particular salon, it's not necessarily a sort of landmark case as you might think. A summer claiming. Yeah. Okay. So do you think it has wider implications at all then let's look specifically at the beauty industry what do you think about that yeah so i think it does have wider implications and partly in as a sort of as being indicative of the way that things are moving in uh in the beauty industry and in other industries as well, just in the gig economy more generally,

that for many years there's been this tendency to put people on these self-employed contracts, which means they don't then have rights. They have very limited employment rights. And now the tide is very much turning on that and people are saying, actually, that's not OK. If we're working for you, if in effect you have control over what what we do at each day and you're taking sums of money from us then actually we ought to have rights that that go alongside that and the the sort of um the the direction

that courts and tribunals are moving in is to is to allow people to have those rights and to grant those rights but i think the problem is that it's very unclear. And so because every case is fact-specific, you have to take it to tribunal to determine what your status is. And I think what we really need is proper legislative input from the government to try and clarify exactly what being an employee means, what being a worker means, what being self-employed means. The grey area for me here, as an outsider to all this,

is the fact that Meghan was working on her own as a hairdresser, but on a premises owned by a company. Isn't that the difficulty here? Well, I think there are lots of difficulties. And a tribunal, when determining employment status, won't just look at one thing. They'll look at the amount of control that the company exerted over someone's working time and what they do and how and when they do their job. They'll look at whether there's what employment law is called mutuality of obligations. So whether there's an obligation to provide work and an obligation to do that work when you're offered it they'll look at what happens on the ground so they will look at the contract but the contract is not conclusive so you can have a contract which says one thing and a perfect example of

that is the uber case which is in the supreme court this week where the contract says one thing but apparently what was done on the ground is something totally different and so you have this sort of weird position where lawyers draft clever contracts, which seek to ensure that someone is a self-employed contractor. But actually, if what they're doing on the ground and the reality on the ground is very different from that, that the contract is not determinative of their employment status. Right. So I suppose we're back to where we started in terms of Megan only being 19 when she started. If you get a contract and it is boggling and you don't get it, you need to be able to know, to show it to someone else and ask a few things about it, surely, Beth? I think that's right. But all that's, you know, it would be a big ask for everybody to take employment, to pay for legal advice every time they enter into an employment contract. I would say everybody should read their contract. And I think Megan is absolutely not alone.

I mean, we have people coming to us in much more senior positions who have not read their employment contract. So I think, you know, the first thing is you should read what you're signing. But I think that's just that, you know, we need more clarity. And, you know, the government, there have been various consultations on employment status and the Taylor report on the gig economy and worker status and how that should be clarified. But actually nothing has, you know, there have been small steps, but there hasn't been no proper legislative change to clear up this area, which is sort of ripe for litigation. Yeah. Yes. Well, quite. Meg, thank you. Sorry, that's Beth, Beth Hale,

employment lawyer. Megan Gorman, you are possibly a small part of this ongoing story, but you certainly played a part in it. So again, congratulations to you. Thank you. And in terms of the lockdown, are you back out and working again? Are things better for you? I am, yes. I'm back in work now, which I'm very happy to be. Must have been a grim couple of months for you before all this. Yeah, it was. Right, OK. Well, I'm glad you're able to earn a living again. Thank you very much indeed for talking to us. We appreciate it.

That's the hairdresser, Megan Gorman, and you also heard from employment lawyer, Beth Hale. Now, Listener Week is a yearly event on Women's Hour. This year it starts on August the 24th, and that's basically a whole week dedicated to your ideas. A lot of people, well not a lot of people, some people do carp about the content

of the programme on a daily basis and you're entitled to obviously but you could rectify that by telling us what you do want us to talk about. You can contact us via the website as ever bbc.co.uk forward slash womanshour bbc.co.uk forward slash

womanshour. Tell us what you want us to talk about the week beginning August the 24th every single item on the programme will be inspired by you Also next week this summer holiday, the school summer holiday does present a real challenge in all sorts of ways.

Limited childcare options, complicated days out, not least because we're not certain what's going to be open and what we'll be able to do when we get there. And parents already somewhat exhausted after months of attempts, valiant attempts at homeschooling. Plus, of course, the summer camps are not always available or not necessarily available this summer because things are so different so are you a parent who has to go back to work from the 1st of August but you can't get child care are you a grandparent who's decided to help out or perhaps you're being more than gently encouraged to help out when it might be against your better judgment all kinds of decisions out there, lots of different dilemmas working their way through our personal systems at the moment. Again, email us your thoughts and your own family situations and we'll talk about all this on Woman's Hour on Monday

morning. bbc.co.uk forward slash Woman's Hour for that one. Now the second of our very useful, we hope, how-to guides. This one is a practical guide about friendship, how to be a good friend, how to make friends, how to keep them, all the tools you need to navigate tricky things like being over or sometimes, frankly, underwhelmed by contact with your mates. We have the expert assistants of the broadcaster and beauty guru, Sally Hughes, the comedian Jenny Eclair, whose new book is called Older and Wider, Survivor's Guide to the Menopause,

and Radhika Sangani, a freelance journalist and novelist, is able to join us as well. Good morning to you all. Good morning, Jane. Oh, blimey, Jenny positively booms. Present and correct. Terrifying, isn't she i know i'm turning myself down right yeah please do um let's start with you radhika you are uh you're in your

early 30s is that right yes i'm 30 right so tell me you have recently and i think very boldly made new friends in fact including in lockdown so tell us about that yeah so I suppose it all started a couple of years ago in my late 20s when I realized that I no longer really had any really close friends I felt super connected to most of my friends were from school and university and I kind of realized that we'd all really grown apart a lot of people were starting to get married and have kids and I was living a very different lifestyle and I started to feel a little bit lonely so I decided to set out and make new friends which always feels really weird as an adult because it just seems like something you do with a child or at university so I found it a little bit daunting but I kind of really set about trying to make new friends whether it was staying later in my yoga class to

speak to the teacher or starting to speak to neighbors or you know like with colleagues actually saying let's go for a drink rather than just kind of you know having lunch together and that's it but that sort of was like step one and it made me realize that it is possible to make new friends as an adult and then when lockdown happened I'm living alone and I felt quite lonely again at the beginning and again lots of my friends were in lockdown with partners or families so I was like something needs to change I can't just be lonely for however long this is going to be so I sort of just started putting into practice all the skills I learned with step one of making friends and um I basically just befriended loads of my neighbours.

And now we have Friday drinks every night, every Friday in the garden. I befriended people who live in cafes near me in West Hampstead. I started outdoor yoga classes and it's kind of become this lovely community. Right. And people, how did they receive your approaches? Because I imagine you were anxious not not to be seen not to be seen as too desperate but you know what I mean how do people react so people are always shocked I

remember one of my now best friends who I met two years ago um the first time I called her on a weekend I was like hey how are you doing and she was like is something wrong why are you ringing I know and I was like I just thought it'd be fun to catch up and she was like okay she was you know she found it really weird and people also got a bit confused when I'd say why didn't we do something on a weekend because weekends always seem to be for your actual friends rather than new friends um so people were shocked but you know if there was a connection between us and they wanted to hang out with me they ended up saying yes do you think sally that there's ever a time when you simply decide to stop making new friends i think that's a kind of i i hear this quite a lot people saying well i've got enough friends the books are closed i'm done now and i understand that impulse if you do have really great friends but i do think it's it's

not a particularly kind of good way to think about the world. My books are always open if I meet somebody and I'm kind of enchanted or intrigued and I pursue it because I kind of feel like when you're sick of meeting other people you're sick of life in a way and so there's always a vacancy. It doesn't happen very often because of course we're busy and our time is taken up with the people we already know and love. But there have been occasions, maybe once every couple of years, where I meet someone really special and I make room. And Jenny Eclair, are you still able to make room for new mates? I'm really fascinated by this. I think it's incredibly interesting.

I think that I have been in my past a bit of a lousy friend. And now that I've hit 60, I'm looking back and I think that I'm very lucky to have some very loyal mates who stuck with me through years of me sort of not really paying them enough attention. I'm slightly suspicious of making new friends I think that this sounds like a bit me me me but I think when I was very busy gigging and I thought I was suspicious of why people wanted to be friends with me. I thought if they expected the same persona that I was on stage and they were going to be entertained, they were going to get all this free entertainment. They're going to get very disappointed because, you know, the reality, of course, is I'm very dull. Don't tell anybody. But, you know, so there's always that. I've always slightly suspected myself as being very good dinner party value,

but I'm not sure whether anybody really needs to follow me up. Yeah, OK. Showbiz pal is a term that we do bandy about. Yeah, it's horrific. Well, we're a little cynical about the term. I haven't got any. Haven't you, really? I haven't got any mates with pools.

Yeah, I'm sort of furious now because i think oh jenny you wasted all this time you could have at least made one mate rich enough to have their own pool or somewhere you know you could get to for this you know weird lockdown time where we're allowed out but we're not really um yes and uh no i i mean i have i do have a a small handful i'd say under 10, very, very good friends. And I have let people into my life into my 40s. But I think they had to sort of slightly bully their way in. And I think for me, incredible friendships have come from work.

And I'm not sure if that counts. I don't know if that's cheating a bit. No, I've just got an anecdote to shoehorn in here. When I was in local radio, I interviewed the country and Western heroine Tammy Wynette and she, yeah, she was amazing, but she said she was friends with Katie Lang and I said to her, well, are you really friends? Could you ring her in the middle of the night

if you had a leaking roof? And Tammy Wynette was forced to admit that she probably wouldn't ring Katie Lang in the middle. Might ring a plumber. Mind you, I don't know. So I don't know why I've mentioned that. Anyway, Radhika, when you introduce yourself to friends, what do you say about what you'll need from them? And actually, do you sell yourself as being someone with

what exactly to offer them in return? Do you mean when I'm making new friends? Yeah. Because I haven't really thought about it. That sounds a bit job-intensive-like. Well, that's why I've got no friends, maybe, but go on. I suppose I kind of just follow a natural connection. So what I will do consciously is make more of an effort to spend time with someone,

you know, whether it is, you know, loitering for an extra 15 minutes or at the end of something to still talk to them or actually suggesting we spend time together. And then I kind of let it happen naturally

to see if we have the connection. I wouldn't, I think that's the most important thing. And actually me and my friends have this amazing theory, which I'm obsessed with, which is called, well, we don't really have a name, but it's either if somebody is a plus two, a minus two or a zero. And that's how we kind of gauge to see if we feel a connection with somebody. So if you leave the encounter and you feel really full and happy, then it's been a plus two situation but if you you know feel nothing it's been a bit zero and if it's been a bit meh it's a minor situation

and it has nothing to do with the person it's more your connection to that person yeah age and see if we have a plus two vibe right and if we do i kind of hope it's mutual and i don't have to sell myself actually you've got i ask radhika go on yeah because i i like this idea and i think it's quite clever sort of hanging around a yoga class because you know they already do yoga. You've got something in common. I've made some nice friends at art classes because I did middle-aged lady hobbies.

But you know, say you've made inroads into making friends and they turn out to be a minus eight. How do you fob them off? Is there a nice way of fobbing friends off? Is there, off is there radical this has happened to me um sadly and i think well basically i just wish i was brave enough to say something um i in the past i've either sort of the best situation is when you both realize so it can kind of fizzle out

um but i think sometimes i've had to say something. I've had to say things like, look, I'm sorry, I'm just really busy right now. I've got a lot on. But, you know, all the enticement things calm down. I know it's a bit rubbish and I feel like I'm fobbing them off, but I just haven't found the kind way to say, I just don't think we should hang out anymore as friends.

Radhika, can I just say that I've got a lot on is really feeble um you need to work on that um Sally um come back in Sally Hughes because I think we're onto something here there are people in many people's lives who actually have been in that that life a long time don't make them feel better but they're still there what do we do about those people? I think this is true. You know, you get to a point with some friends where there is a huge disparity between the amount of effort you're putting in, the amount of effort they're putting in. And I think in that situation, you just have to weigh up and think, you know, is this a price of admission I'm prepared to pay? Do they give me enough in other ways that I am prepared for the fact that they don't love me in quite the way I need?

And am I loved in the right way by other friends? And is that enough? Or actually, is it not enough? Am I actually really fed up? And is it time to let it go? And I do think you almost have to treat it mathematically like that. You know, there are some friends I have who are really close friends and we only ever talk about television. And that's completely fine because I have other friends who will stay up all night crying and talking and that's fine I think to take a kind of portfolio approach

is often the more possible way to think about your and not expect your friends to be all things all of the time I think actually whether what they lack yes made up forgive me sorry it's very difficult I have to keep interrupting people at the moment I do apologize I just can't see anybody so I'm budging into the conversation all the time. You had a good example, Sally, of a friend of yours who helped you through a the stuff that you're meant to do. But I had one friend called Paul who phoned me every single night to talk about Big Brother. And that's all he did. He called for a big chat of what had been happening in Big Brother. And that was meaningful. You know, it was routine, it was meaningful, it was caring, it was kind. And actually, I think those sorts of friends are really underrated. I think we imagine girls must have these friends who do these kind of, go through these very visceral, emotional episodes. Actually, some friends just check in, and that's really meaningful. Yeah, and if you are the sort of person who wants to check in

or wants to make the proverbial casserole, then do it, because you might not be the person who can do the handholding at half past three in the morning. Radhika, have you got anybody in your life who serves that purpose or would you do that for somebody else? Yeah, definitely. And it's funny because, again, it's my new friends who I feel that with. And you sort of always think it's going to be the friends you've known forever, your childhood friends. But for me, it's the people I've known well a couple of years and also my new friend in lockdown my neighbor I've only known her for three or four months but she's the person I've been calling um for crises when I had a moth infestation she's the one that's been there helping me

and it's really special but I think also one thing I've really come to learn in my friendship is kind of like what Sally was saying it's to find out what someone needs so a question I always ask when someone tells me something quite difficult is you know what do you need from me do you need advice do you just need a hug do you just need me to listen and I find that's quite a nice question because it just helps you I suppose do the right thing for what they need in that moment. Yeah. Can I just go to emails from listeners? This is from Liz, and this is just a very simple illustration of long, long friendships which have really served her well. I have some special friendships with the girls I was at college with

40 years ago, says Liz. It's given us a terrific foundation because we got to know one another so well, living in Hall whilst training back in the 70s. We were all trainee teachers. We, of course, went our separate ways. We took up jobs, got married, had families. Some people went through divorces, scattered in four different locations.

But in 40 years, we've never argued. We've always showed true respect and kindness to and for one another. And these bonds have been pure joy to us all. We now have video calls once a week. As we get older, this will continue to be invaluable. We've all had different lives, different experiences, been successful in our own right, but this backup is like a firewall,

offering caring, kindness and honesty from those we trust against whatever life might throw at us. We're all clear in the knowledge that this fabulous bond will exist forever and we'll never take it for granted. That is, we sort of laugh about some aspects, but this is hugely significant, Jenny, in the lives of so many women, these decades-long friendships. Oh yeah, I've got primary school friends that I love very much, a very deep root and a shared experience. I mean, as I say, you know, for me, some of my favourite friendships.

And I like what both the other women have said, actually, about, you know, not every friend has to supply you with everything. I get a lot. I live with a man who happens to be my best man friend because we have a huge amount in common. I actually really like my daughter my mum makes me laugh so I'm really quite lucky with you know there's a core of family friends as well that works for me I like my family um but I I and also I have a sort of weird thing because I write novels I sort of uh make up these friends so often I'm living with women that I'm they're not they don't really actually exist but for kind of months on end I have to give them quite a lot of attention because I'm writing their lives I know that doesn't really make sense but that is that takes up quite a chunk of my time right one of my great friendships has been with the TV producer,

Judith Holder, who basically saved my career at one point by putting me on Grumpy Old Women. And then we got together and she's very kind of head girly. And I'd never had a head girl friend before. And she kind of said, right, we're going to write a show together. And I went, oh, all right, we'll do this. And then, you know, it's been 15 years of incredible experiences and taking the show to extraordinary places.

And we've been so lucky. That has been a complete bonus. And I think that now I am sort of, I've actually found this quite very interesting, this conversation. Oh, right, OK. And I'm going to be a bit more open, but with caution. Right, OK, open but with caution.

So if you'd like to become Jenny and Claire's friend, this is the optimum time. You have to audition. You have to do a song and a dance. Oh, Lord. More seriously, I want to bring in Claire, who has emailed to say, what do you do when a friend is letting their partner

take gross advantage of them? In my case, the friend is a martyr to the situation and makes endless excuses about the partner, but also has a good whinge on a regular basis. Okay, the email goes on, but I think we have all been in that sort of situation. So Sally Hughes, what does a good friend do in that set of circumstances? Yes, I'm afraid I've been in this situation a couple of times. It's extremely difficult. I think it's probably the ultimate challenge in friendship when someone is going out with a terrible person. I think you have to, whoever they're going out with, you have to constantly bring it back to how do they make your friend feel?

Because actually, if they make your friend feel happy and you really angry, then you kind of have to let it go. But of course, if it's an abusive relationship where the person you love is actually going through a terrible time, it's really difficult. I think you have to let them know that the crash mat is waiting outside of the window should they ever decide to leap and you will be there and you will be a good friend to them but also at the same time it's a deeply frustrating situation and you are allowed to take yourself out of it a bit you are allowed when you've heard them say a million times that they're going to leave and then they don't leave you are allowed to say do you know what I will be here if you do but I need to go over there for a bit because I own mental health needs to be looked

after because it's the worst. It's a horrible situation that can really impact the friend. Yes. And it is the repetition, isn't it? When you have, you honestly have heard the whole thing before. But maybe in some cases, I don't know. What do you think, Jenny? The friend just needs to, by airing it again, they feel a bit better. Can I be totally honest here? Go on. There's also a terror, an absolute terror of being such a good friend and sort of saying, you know, I'll be here for you. That actually they do leave the old man and they come and stay with you and you never get rid of them. And they bring the kids and all that.

If I'm really honest, I'm terrified of things going wrong for my friends. I really am. Because I don't know how much mopping up I can practically actually do. I don't have a spare wing in the house. I think, actually, you've been very honest. And that will also ring true for a lot of people. Radhika, we have to be a little bit careful about what we offer friends. Because one day we might be asked to deliver it. and it wasn't quite what we had in mind yeah i for me it's just always really important to be um really honest and this might sound a bit too i don't know like hippie a woo

but i've got really into speaking my truth lately which means just thinking really carefully about what i'm saying and only offering something if i actually mean it um and also just thinking really carefully about what I'm saying and only offering something if I actually mean it um and also just being really careful to not tell people what to do so in that situation which I've also been in you don't it's so tempting to be like do this leave him break up with him whatever but I've just learned that that doesn't go well um and also I end up feeling really frustrated and if they don't do that so I just try and take a bit of a step back and talk more about the feelings or the patterns of the situation and maybe

if we keep repeating the same topic just take a step back and just talk more about how I suppose it's just how it's affecting them rather than the ins and outs of what the person did and that kind of thing A quick email here from a listener who says, could you discuss friendship groups? I have friends, but I'm not included in a friendship group. Oh, me either.

Who said that? Is that you, Radhika? Let's all join a group without anybody else. I haven't got a friendship group. Not a big group, not a gang. I'm not in a book club either. OK, Sally? Well, not formally, no. I have lots of friends and we all like each other,

but I don't know, not a formal group. I don't really know what that means. Well, what about WhatsApp? You must be in any number of different WhatsApp groups. I'm not. Oh, Jenny. I've got rid of the app, you've got my nerves. Go on, Sally.

Yes, we have WhatsApp groups and I have a close circle of girlfriends with whom I speak every single day, that's true, but we don't formalise it in a gang sense. Oh, OK. All right, you sound very... I suppose you can't... I like the idea of a gang. Oh, OK. All right. You sound very... I suppose you can't... Go on, Jenny. I like the idea of a gang. I think gang now is good. I want an all-girl gang. I want password and I want a den. That's going to be my job to do today. I just think you'd take up space in a den, Jenny.

And I mean that in a kind of... I don't mean it in a sense of... Call me fat. No, I'm not talking about logistics. I'm just talking about your personality. Yeah. I do just talking about your personality. Yeah. I do like that WhatsApp group thing because it's a little and often approach. So you don't have the stress of that huge download when you see people. Do you know what I mean?

Where it's quite stressful, where you have to catch up. A WhatsApp approach kind of allows you to just check in little and often, wander away, come back, and people know where they are. Yeah. And if you had to rate yourself as a and often, wander away, come back, and people know where they are. Yeah, and if you had to rate yourself as a friend, Radhika, to wind up, what do you think your mates, new or old, what do you think they'd say about you? I think I'm a solid nine.

Really? OK. Jenny? I really do. I give myself about six. I'm good on Twitter, though. I'm really good on Twitter. I think I'm a great Twitter mate. I give myself nine on Twitter though I'm really good on Twitter I think I'm a great Twitter mate I'd give myself 9 on Twitter different friends, different rankings you'd have to ask them Sally?

It's among the most important things in my life so I'd probably give myself full marks for the attention and effort I put into it I'd give myself full marks but not after 9.30 at night please don't bother me call any time after 6 in the morning but not after 9.30 at night. Please don't bother me. Call any time after 6 in the morning but not after 9.30 at night. Thank you all very, very much. Love to talk

to you this morning. We'll form a little group and have a little chat. I feel that everybody would benefit hugely from that. You heard there from Jenny Eclair, from Sally Hughes and from Radhika Sangani and thanks to them for taking part and your thoughts on that. Warmly welcome at BBC Women's Hour.

I'm trying to sound extra friendly as we move on to the subject of rock pools. Heather Butterfont, author of Rock Pool, Extraordinary Encounters Between the Tides, A Lifelong Fascination Told in 24 Creatures. Heather, good morning to you. Good morning, Jane. Thanks for having me along this morning. Well, it's a great pleasure. John, every single page of this book, there's a nugget that somebody will enjoy. And yes, we will talk about that fact about barnacles that I know you're desperate to bring to the nation. But we'll start with, there are great rock pools, presumably,

all over Britain, but there must be parts of the British coastline that are the best for rock pools. Of course, I am massively biased. I grew up in Cornwall and I still live in Cornwall. So, of course, I'm going to say Cornwall because we have, obviously, rocky shores all around the edge of Cornwall, Devon as well. A lot of Wales is rocky. Scotland's amazing. So many places, Yorkshire, all those sort of rocky coasts of course places you have rocks are great for rock pools really any rock pool, you never know what you might find, you can go to the most

unpromising looking place you might find something of course around the south-east, particularly the east coast where you have very long, sandy or muddy beaches they're not so great for rock pools, but they're still brilliant for beachcombing.

And if you go paddling in the sea, you can see all sorts of things there as well. And anywhere with sea. Let's start with the limpet, which is something that we're all aware of. But what is it? Because they're much more interesting than we might have been led to believe.

Of course. I think we just assume limpets don't do anything. They're almost part of the rock. They look like they are. So these are these cone-shaped shells and they live attached to the rock. What we see is them when they're resting. They're out of the water. The tide's gone out and we see them on the rock. So obviously they're not going anywhere at that point because like any sea creature, they don't want to dry out. The sun and the wind are their worst enemy and they're very exposed to it up on those rocks.

But as soon as the tide comes in, the little limpet takes on a whole new life, of course. It needs to go off and feed and see its friends. So it sets off across the rock and it munches on the little tiny algae, the seaweeds that live on the rocks. And it basically scours the whole rock clean. And the amazing thing about the limpet is that it doesn't just have little teeth to do this. It has something called a radula, which is like a, think like a tongue, but with a sore edge and it has that fringed with a material called

gophite which is the strongest biological material known to man and as it scours off the sea weed it actually chips off bits of rock so if you go down to the beach when the tide has maybe just gone out and the limpets are heading home after their, put your ear close to the rock where the limpets are. And you can sometimes hear them munching on the seaweed because what you can hear is actually the rock being chipped off and they gouge out a little trail along the rock, a zigzag trail that you can see if you have slate or a soft rock, you can see this trail where the limpets have been. So they are quite incredible.

That is just remarkable. And I'm sorry to introduce the subject of cannibalism, but crabs, they're not immune to a bit of that. Yeah, especially our most common crab. So the shore crab, if you've ever been crabbing or looking in the rock pools, the crab that you're most likely to have found is this little crab that when it's grown up, it's got a green colour, but when they're babies, they come in every possible color um and the the green shore crab is a master of survival it's it's a fabulous one you know if you take the kids down to the shore

to understand how these creatures live because they can survive right near the top of the shore where they've got pools that warm up in the sun and get frozen in the winter and they can survive if the water is very salty where it's evaporated out they can survive if there's a river coming through it they can live up in estuaries they're amazing things um and being good at survival anyone who's ever read a bear grills book you know it's full of how to eat everything that you can get your hands on. And that's what the crabs do. Prawns are similar as well. They can eat just anything. Well, including each other. Including each other.

Oh dear. Including each other, particularly the young crabs. So that's why we always say if you do go to the beach and you're catching crabs, only have ideally just one at a time in your bucket with plenty of water so that it's comfortable. Because as soon as you've got more than one in there, they will start to fight and they may actually eat each other. Okay, I meant they're not averse to a bit of cannibalism. I've just realised I said something else. So I just corrected myself before we get emails.

Where else should we go? Starfish are just... When you see a starfish on a beach, I think it's just one of life's... They are miraculous little things, aren't they? What are they all about? Starfish are... I think they're normally top of the list. If I take groups, whether it's adults or children, out on the beach, starfish are top of the list of things that people would love to see.

And people often haven't ever seen a real one in real life because you do need to go a bit further down the shore and look more carefully to find them but we have lots of species of starfish in our rock pools around the UK and they are amazing creatures of course and they're very beautiful and we love starfish because they're beautiful and what children really like about starfish isn't so much their beauty but their their weird their weird ways of living and so starfish uh quite easily lose an arm if they get in a fight or they they have an encounter with the predator they quite often will lose an arm or two arms or three arms even four or five arms

and that's not a big problem to a starfish if they've lost a couple of arms they simply grow them back again which is quite special. In fact, the crabs can do it as well. They can very slowly grow limbs back. And the remarkable thing about starfish as well is if that arm that's been severed has a bit of the central disc left on it, it may regrow into a whole new starfish. Again, I mean, I could listen to this stuff all day, but now comes possibly the epitome

of what's passed for my career. Tell me about a barnacle's penis, Heather. Everybody wants to know this. Trust me, they want to know behind the glass. They're gawping at it. Go on. Let's take it back to the beginning. Barnacles are little creatures,

little shelled creatures that live on the rocks. They often completely cover the rocks. If you've been walking on the rocks at low tide, you'll often find they're sharp and they hurt your feet, or if you fall, they scratch your hands. So those little creatures, and like the limpet, they don't seem to do very much because they're just stuck there, aren't they? We only really discovered that barnacles were crustaceans

and related to crabs and prawns and things when people started looking down microscopes. Because when they're tiny babies, the barnacles swim around in the plankton. OK, so they've got little legs and they swim all over the place. It's only when they're ready to become adults that they settle down and the little barnacle swims down headfirst onto the rock and glues cements its its head the back of its neck onto the rock with its legs in the air and then it grows the shell that we used to around itself for protection it's got a little door at the top it just opens that pops its legs out to feed when the tide comes in and grabs little bits of plankton going past all All good up to there. And obviously you can have hundreds and hundreds of barnacles. You've only got about 30 seconds.

Yeah. So the barnacle needs to fertilise other barnacles in the area, but it can't move, it can't go anywhere. So it has to have an enormously long appendage, which it uses. You can say penis, it's woman's hour. It's then done fishes. Yeah. It's fishes into other barnacles.

Like a lucky dip, really. Like a lucky dip, yes. The key fact is, if a barnacle were human, and it isn't, if it were a six-foot tall man, and it's not, its penis would be about 48 foot long, correct? That's right. It depends on the individual barnacles. They're not all equal.

They actually have very often an extendable penis like a telescopic penis that comes out. When they're finished it takes a lot of energy so once they've finished with that and they've done fertilising all the barnacles they will drop their penis

they no longer need it and they actually will have been fertilised by their fellow barnacles, they will drop their penis, they no longer need it. And they actually will have been fertilised by their fellow barnacles around them. They're male and female at the same time. So then they breed their own eggs and they go off into the plankton. That was Heather Buttervant, whose book is quite simply called Rock Pool, Extraordinary Encounters Between the Tides. And I think as I get older, I just love the seaside even more and is there a greater pleasure actually genuinely than just wandering along the sand looking at stuff

and who are we as humans to rate ourselves when barnacles are out there with their extendable penises female and male disguising themselves as rocks I mean these things are just remarkable and we're faffing about ordering coffees and worrying about mattress toppers, if you're me. That's what occupies our heads. Thank you to everybody who emailed the programme today. Quite a lot of thoughts on friendship. We'll get onto those in a moment or two. Let's just deal with rock pools. This is from Nicola, who says, tell me about a barnacle's penis. Jane Garvey says that question might well be the pinnacle of her career. I think I suggested it might be.

I don't think I got my words wrong today, so I don't think I said pinnacle, although I absolutely meant to. So thank you for hearing what you thought I meant to say rather than what I actually did say. I appreciate that, Nicola. And from another listener, thank you for talking about rock pools. I have such fond memories of holidays on the beach in north wales it's a must for all youngsters for part of an education in

biology as a science and it gave me a lifelong interest in marine biology that's from rw and rw actually yes we used to go on family holidays to north wales and places like temby and um abbasoc is that north wales certainly wales saundersfoot i know is in south wales we used to go on family holidays to North Wales and places like Tembi and Abbasock. Is that North Wales? Certainly Wales. Saundersfoot, I know, is in South Wales. We used to go there too. And it would be, let's be honest, not that hot.

And my mother would smother me in Hawaiian tropic in the hope that the sun would come out and the temperature would get beyond 18 Celsius. But fantastic memories and a beautiful place to go on holiday. To the subject of friendship, we had a wide-ranging conversation about that on the programme today, and this email came in from somebody who doesn't want their name read out. She says, Hi there, I don't have any friends. Well, apart from one woman, I meet for a coffee once or twice a year. I have Asperger's and people just can't wait to get away from me.

I thought that was terrible until I went to an Autism in Pink conference and one of the speakers declared I have no friends and I'm okay with that as I've decided to be content with just my husband and family. It's not that we don't want friends but navigating social relationships is so difficult and painful. I'm soon to be 60 and have finally accepted my friendless state, but I do miss female friendships enormously. Please note, I don't want my name read out. Well, I haven't read your name out, but I have read your email and I'm very moved by it and I hope you're all right. And I wonder whether actually the focus really should be on those of us who perhaps don't reach out to people who might seem I don't know slightly

out of the ordinary and perhaps we're the ones who need to ask ourselves one or two questions about how we treat people and how we regard them and how we assess them I don't know but thank you for contacting us and um the best of luck to you. Jill says, my best friend, Gillian, lives in Australia. We've known each other for over 50 years. We sat next to each other in school at the age of 15. Distance has never affected our relationship. I've flown to Melbourne twice to attend the weddings of two of her daughters, and we contact each other all the time. Maggie, friendships like marriage, sometimes you give 80% and just get 20% back. Sometimes it's the other way around. And then

again, it varies. It changes. Yep, quite right, Maggie. Helen says starting families can be a sad thing for friendships when child-free women suddenly decide they don't want to be friends with women who have got children, or of course it can work the other way around. A single child-free women suddenly decide they don't want to be friends with women who have got children, or of course it can work the other way around. A single child-free friend of mine did this when I had my second child. She abandoned our entire since high school close friendship group, never gave a second thought to how her abandonment would feel to us, stuck at home with new babies and much in need of the support of close friends,

child-free or not. It's a very selfish view to think you need to find new friends as soon as your old friends start making families. My two best friends remain child-free, our relationships have survived and are stronger than ever as lives have changed but I always do miss the friend who left. At the end of the day I think it's her loss. An email from Anna. I'm 66 and my rule of thumb is I always have room in my life for one more friend. I have fewer than eight real friends but they are like gold to me. And Anonymous says I was lucky enough to have a group of friends who supported me to give me the courage to leave an abusive husband. But one quite literally shut the door in my face when my needs were at their most.

Now through lockdown, my real friendships have strengthened and flourished and I've been able to support them in return. I have to see the friend I lost who lives nearby, but now I know that she's lost out too as my life has transformed. Yeah, there's all sorts of questions raised by that. And I was really interested in what was said in that section of our chat earlier in the programme when we talked about when a woman does leave and, as Jenny O'Clair pointed out, might need more of you than you are prepared to give. It's a very, very complex area, this, isn't it? But thank you to everybody who contacted us. And there is another how-to coming soon. This one is about how to end your relationship well,

managing the practical, emotional, legal and financial aspects of splitting up with the least amount of harm caused to yourself and others. We'd love your experiences, please. We don't need to mention your names and experiences, good and bad. I think it is possible to have a relatively good breakup. It can be managed well, but it needs help and cooperation from all quarters, obviously. Equally, we have to acknowledge just how difficult these breakups can be. So let us know what you've gone through, what advice you might have, what questions you might have.

bbc.co.uk forward slash Women's Hour. Tomorrow, Jenny is here, flicking over the page there to find out what she's doing. She's going to be talking to the Barnsley Nightingale, Kate Rusby. Jenny herself is from Barnsley Nightingale, Kate Rusby. Now Jenny herself is from Barnsley so I suspect there'll be one or two Barnsley related questions. Kate was a nominee for 1999's Mercury Prize and she's since been a winner at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. So Kate Rusby on the programme tomorrow and also Jenny's going to be making Indonesian relish with Lara Lee. That's tomorrow. Hope making Indonesian relish with Lara Lee.

That's tomorrow. Hope you It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.