Oh, finally! A holiday away from myself

With six people to carry the conversation (and the cool box) socialising is a breeze again

It was around 10am on Monday morning that I spotted my first post-lockdown doorstep gathering. A circle of six middle-aged friends were sitting on fold-out chairs in the host’s front yard, chatting animatedly, sipping from flasks or reusable coffee cups. It looked like a particularly convivial al fresco AA meeting. And it was adorable.

With outdoor gatherings of six people now permitted in England and Wales, these fortunate chunks of Britain wasted no time dusting off the spare garden chairs and inviting long-lost friends and family members over for tea, crisps, takeaway pizza, Aperol spritzes… anything, anytime, as long as it involved other people. I’m sure there have been plenty of fancy garden parties taking place in secluded back gardens across the UK. Meticulously planned Instagrammable affairs with Anthropologie rattan napkin rings and gleaming new patio heaters. But it is the more makeshift garden parties that charmed me this week; the garden parties where no garden was required. I’ve been impressed by just how creative budding British social butterflies can be, establishing pop-up living rooms on their front doorsteps, garden walls, park benches, beaches, fields and leisure-centre car parks. I’ve also loved seeing the armies of six on their morning walks, or meeting up to kick a football around the park, everyone beaming with delight, high as a kite on the company of other humans. If you haven’t found this stage of the lockdown-easing charming, I’m afraid you have no soul.

And to be completely honest, I’ve been a bit concerned about my soul. I’d been getting really bored of it, and I’d started to fear that it was starting to resemble a shrivelled-up old prune. I’m certain that mine is not a terrible soul; I feel I have decent moral instincts, some relatively informed opinions to endlessly ruminate over, a good bank of fabulous travel memories, and an eye for the absurd that keeps me entertained. But even those of us blessed with fully-MOTed souls have to admit that it’s been pretty boring being the lockdown version of ourselves for the past few months.

I’ve always known that my friends and family are my greatest treasures, and I count on being around funny, kind, wise, creative, and occasionally wicked and wild people. I need these different influences in my life in order to be at my best. I’m desperately in need of being tugged back into shape by other people, like a washed woollen jumper.

So I had March 29 ringed in my diary for weeks, as the date when I’d finally be able to fill my cup with the company

of others. “Darling, I can’t wait until you represent just 16.6 per cent of my social circle, rather than 50 per cent!” is how I presented it to Aleksandar, my longsuffering support bubble. But of course it’s my own company I’m looking forward to downscaling significantly.

What a relief it is to only have to contribute an easy 16.6 per cent of a conversation! To only develop 16.6 per cent of the ideas for legal leisure activities! To problem-solve merely 16.6 per cent of the time, and contribute 16.6 per cent of the pizzazz. In a duo, there is no room for shirkers, which amps up the pressure when you feel you don’t have much to bring to the proverbial party. It’s like being in an ice-skating duo; if either Torvill or Dean slacks off, it shows. A group of six, by contrast, is more of a team effort, and every football player is allowed a few off-games in a season. So six-person gatherings feel like a holiday, even if it’s just my own company I’m getting a break from.

I’m writing this as a single adult in a support bubble with another single adult, but even if you’ve been lockeddown as a family, or a couple, or an entire hippie commune, lockdown has taught us all that no home is an island. Friends with kids have been similarly giddy about the prospect of larger gatherings, when they are no longer expected to perform as one-man bands – entertaining and educating children while the other parent works.

Whether we live in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, we all still face a good few weeks of restrictions. But I feel that the other restrictions all feel so much more manageable now we can travel as a tribe, gather outdoors as a group, and sit back and let someone else carry the conversation – and the picnic basket – for a while. Happy holidays!

i The rule of six means that everyone can take a little time out from the conversation