Being trapped in a friend ‘bubble’ would be no fun at all

Imust say I hugged myself with anti-social glee when I heard that Nicola Sturgeon (probably the first time the words “glee” and “Nicola Sturgeon” have been used in the same sentence) had suggested that we wriggle the bonds of lockdown a little looser by meeting up with a selected number of mates, albeit in the great outdoors and certainly not yet within groping range.

A Scottish government paper said: “We are considering if and how we could make changes to allow people to meet with a small number of others … outside their own household in a group or ‘bubble’ that acts as a single, self-contained unit, without connections to other households or ‘bubbles’.”

There are two elephants in the room, though – or rather, in the open air meeting place observing trunk-length social distancing. First of all, these bubbles would not be permitted to mix, which would lead to tough and – hopefully – upsetting choices as households decide what “bubbles” they want to be part of.

I say “hopefully” because, to be honest, I’m really quite a b---- and, while I miss the obvious things about my friends (hugging them, seeing their little faces light up when you lie to them), I also miss causing trouble among them; there’s only just so much you can do on Facebook before the boo-hooers bang the block button. Don’t judge me – what looked like more fun, Mean Girls or Little Women?

People like to paint friendship as a pure shore, but the best ones often have all the court and spark of a love affair; it’s when they start feeling like a marriage that they’re in trouble.

We all know couples in which one person is fun and popular and the other is a drip, who only has their “partner” – that dreary bunch of oxygen-thieves, who I think of as Mother Nature’s Plus Ones. This group has been really enjoying the lockdown as they finally get to clip the wings of the fun one, though I have noticed an increased use of social media on the part of these poor incarcerated souls.

Would the dullards have to tag along and be in the popular one’s bubble? This would almost be worth it for the chance to play Bore Bingo at their expense but, overall, it would be a buzzkill as they pile banality upon bromide until self-isolation seems a desirable state.

Secondly, bubbles of any kind tend to be rubbish, producing the stale level of interaction and affirmation we associate with the “social bubbles” of snowflakes, Remoaners and crybullies in their deluded and doctrinaire echo chambers. Not being horrible but, can you imagine how boring Sturgeon’s bubble of buddies would be, all banging on about the evils of Brexit and the wonders of haggis? What struck me as creepy about the Prof Ferguson kerfuffle wasn’t the adultery bit (been there, got the scarlet letter) or the hypocrisy (I assume anyway that those who tell the rest of us how to behave are hypocrites), but the totally creepy information that his married mistress views their two households “as one”, which filled me with the same horror as reading about communes where they take the doors off of people’s bedrooms. Give me a boundary over a bubble every time.

I don’t just want to stare at the familiar faces of old friends and reminisce about old times, no matter how fun they were – I want to make new friends and learn new stuff. I don’t want to sit six feet apart making small talk with an approved list of usual suspects; I want to “take the world in a love embrace” as Steppenwolf sang in Born To Be Wild.

Lord Weidenfeld said a lovely thing: “For me, conviviality is what for other people is sport and entertainment.” A friend once asked me: “Can’t you ever meet a mate for a cup of coffee without making the whole thing into a hen party?” after I suggested that a quick espresso might be improved by adding alcohol, lunch and eight additional people and I suppose the answer is: “Not if I can help it!”

One of the many reasons why Brexit was such a wonderful thing is that it threw up so many fault-lines in our friendships, making the sensible sorts among us realise that we’d rather be loathed for who we are than loved for something we’re not.

The friendships which survive the plague will similarly be more precious, when we look back at what we almost lost.