No masking the pleasure: some people have quickly embraced the ‘new normal’

allowed – a cup of tea at her house is forbidden, but we can ride the log flume at Chessington World of Adventures? We settled on a walk along the Thames and sandwiches on Barnes Common. I wrote it proudly in my diary and, like a Land Girl excited about a forthcoming dance at the village hall, made a mental note to wash my hair the night before. Perhaps I’d lay out my clothes on the armchair in my room, too.

Looking back several pages in this diary, I observed that pre-lockdown me was often out four or five times a week. Who was that mad sybarite who thought nothing of dinner in Soho one night and drinks in Angel the next? It feels less like my diary and more like a Scott Fitzgerald novel. And make-up every day as if I were Elizabeth Taylor. It seems another age.

No doubt we’ll adapt just as quickly coming out of this thing, whenever that may be. That loathsome phrase “the new normal” is still being bandied about, but human beings have an astonishingly short memory and doubtless I’ll be back in eyeliner, weaving my way through Soho before long. We’ll have to start writing these engagements down so we don’t forget. Let me know if you need a new calendar, I can sort you out.