Who the hell are you?

Is it temporary amnesia? Is that why I don’t recognise you? Or was it the fact that you said I love Michael Bolton/ Steve Price is an intellectual super power/ I think Campbell Newman is a fair and responsible leader/ Vaccinations aren’t necessary?

Steve Price: intellectual super power or bizarrely popular blow-hard?

Sometimes your friends or family members just come out with some comment that renders them so completely unfamiliar and unrecognisable to you that you wonder who it was that you’ve been spending all your time with for the last 18 years.

Of course time passes, people change, but usually the changes are so gradual that it takes five years for you to properly realise ‘Hey, Uncle Barry is completely bald’, when he’s actually been bypassing the services of Advanced Hair Studios all this time and shedding his crowning glory with every shower and gust of wind. You’ve probably just noticed properly because for once good old Bazza’s noggin wasn’t ear deep in the esky fishing around for the last imported beer.

Or it could be your good-time gal pal – who probably needs several days notice before conducting a blood test – declaring that she’s off the turps and her favourite food is no longer pizza, but quinoa and kale salad. Sorry, we can’t be friends anymore. What is it about kale that sends people so completely batty and seems to give them license to pontificate endlessly about green smoothies? Shut up. I should stress though, these changes are usually temporary and she’ll be passed out in a vat of chocolate mousse before you can say ‘shall we open another bottle?’

Sometimes these realisations come as such a shock and land with such a loud clang that the possibility of even continuing to tolerate the person becomes an impossibility, as it reveals their true colours for the first time. And it’s not a lovely peacock blue. The colour is usually brown, because they are a turd.

I experienced one last night. I think I have to defriend this person – not just on Facebook, but in real life too. A comment they made about a picture I posted online was so g-darn bitchy, superior and insensitive it enraged me. I think she was trying to be funny, but it just came off as nasty and made light of a situation that has caused me a bit of grief over the last 18 months. Should have seen it coming really, she’s always had a scrag streak. Well, game on, moll.

Michael Bolton: soulful crooner or exceptional cultivator of mullets?

So is it just one single comment that can completely change your mind? Or is it just the final straw that makes you recognise, ‘Oh no, you actually are a flaming beeyotch’? My husband tells me I’m overreacting and to just ignore her hideous insensitivity, but wouldn’t life be boring if we all just shrugged our shoulders and said ‘whatevs’ all the time?! I’m just bringing the entertainment.

And don’t think this concept of lapses of recognition doesn’t apply to you. You don’t have to have middle-stage dementia to not recognise yourself. Don’t tell me you haven’t woken up, looked in the mirror and shrieked: ‘Who the eff is that?” I was a smokin’ hot bitty when I went to bed last night. We’re all smokin’ hot bitties after five sav blancs.

It doesn’t even have to be visual. Saying no to a night on the tiles in favour of a chain restaurant curry and a Graham Norton rerun recently left me in tears, despite his guest Miriam Margolyes being the funniest person alive, because I no longer recognised myself… what kind of sad sack am I choosing to stay at home, in my jimjams, eating curry, to watch a bitchy Englishman? Actually when you put it like that it sounds pretty good.