When did you last hang out? - by Nikki Osman

I’m doing nothing with my friend one Wednesday when it occurs to me that I can’t remember the last time I did nothing with anyone I’m not married or related to. I’ve sipped Americanos in coffee shops and put away pasta after work. But as we eat our way down to the second layer of the biscuit tin, bundle her baby into his pram and meet my nephew at the school gates, we get to the conversational core; the stuff we only skimmed the surface of in the catch-up calls that proceeded it. We’re…hanging out. That our hang was enabled by annual leave is part of the problem. ‘At what point does hanging out become catching up?’ asked Harriet Walker this week. In a piece for The Times, the fashion editor and self-described geriatric millennial examined the impact of ageing on socialising. ‘The time I spend with my friends often feels like a work meeting,’ she wrote, of the catch-up culture that’s become a by-product of busy. ‘Job stuff, house stuff, money stuff, busy kids, sick parents, then maybe a

I’m doing nothing with my friend one Wednesday when it occurs to me that I can’t remember the last time I did nothing with anyone I’m not married or related to. I’ve sipped Americanos in coffee shops and put away pasta after work. But as we eat our way down to the second layer of the biscuit tin, bundle her baby into his pram and meet my nephew at the school gates, we get to the conversational core; the stuff we only skimmed the surface of in the catch-up calls that proceeded it. We’re…hanging out. That our hang was enabled by annual leave is part of the problem. ‘At what point does hanging ou