'What?'  You ask.  Let me explain, or try to.

I have been a Girls' Brigade leader for a little over thirty years - scary in itself.  The GB leaders a generation 'above' me tended to sign off letters as 'yours in Brigade' and we all kind of knew what it meant.  At various times I have met people who are/were GB leaders and we instantly fell into deep and hilarious conversations about all things GB.  There is something about the intentionality of the organisation that runs quite deep.  My Guide friends report the same thing.  Indeed, to be fair, GB and Guide leaders are capable of similar unintentioned intentionality when they get together.

In a couple of hours I am due to pick up an online 'friend' at Glasgow airport and see her and her husband safely onto their train to Fort William where they are travelling ahead of the weekend's Ben Nevis climb.  Combine the ridiculous lack of a rail link from Glasgow airport into town, with Scotrail's crazy route, and they are slightly bewildered.  Easier by far that I collect them and dispatch them from the centre of the universe that is Hyndland station, possibly on the self same train that Scotrail told them to get from Glasgow Central via Dalmuir (the Fort William train goes from Queen Street....)!  She and I share some common experiences over the last couple of years, and so there is a similar unintended intentionality going on.  This morning, I had an email from another online 'friend' who is part of the same 'club no one wants to join' saying she wanted to travel up (from Cumbria!) to welcome us back off the mountain.  The same kind of instant connection arises as does with the GB/Guide leaders.

So.  Question.  Is this a 'girl' thing?  Or is it a shared experience thing?  It happens to an extent at Baptisty events, but never to the same intensity.  I have never shared real belly laughs with individual, unknown Baptists, and sometimes they really wind me up form the get-go.  What do others think?