Bryony GORDON

There comes a point in life when you have to accept that some things are just not for you. Large social gatherings, I have realised, are one of them. I thought that this was just an inevitable age thing – an “I’m in my forties and I’m too old to stay up late talking rubbish to people I barely know” thing.

But the announcement this week that the Reading Festival will be going ahead has sent many of my much older friends – who have been vaccinated – into rhapsodies. To them, the thought of spending a weekend in a field listening to Liam Gallagher is simply glorious. The close proximity of thousands of other people actually excites them. “Oh, to be at an event, singing along with strangers!” they wax lyrically on Facebook, this year of isolation only highlighting to them how much they need to be surrounded by crowds of people.

Honestly, I cannot think of anything worse. No, that’s a lie

– I can: going to a dinner party.

The only thing I have enjoyed about this pandemic is not having to go to dinner parties, or similar social events of more than one other person. Indeed, it wasn’t until last year that I realised I had been operating on a “rule of six” long before Covid came along.

The thought of gatherings over this number of people would send me into a spiral of anxiety and I was beginning to run out of excuses to get out of them. “Sorry, the babysitter cancelled” was used so often that friends had politely started to suggest I get a more reliable one. “I’ve got a terrible headache” led one person to offer me the number of a good neurologist. How to say “I really, really don’t like socialising with large groups of people or after 5pm” without appearing like a) a hermit or b) a sociopath?

I miss my friends, of course I do, but I don’t miss seeing them in large groups, where everyone fights to talk over each other and most people are rip-roaring drunk. I thought my fear of evening events was a natural response to getting sober, but this pandemic has allowed me to see that it had always been there, and that the large amount of alcohol I ingested was my way of dampening down that fear.

I’ve spent much of my adult life believing with all my might that I am a gregarious party girl, the kind who attends festivals even though she has a mortgage and is peri-menopausal. Then a pandemic comes along and I realise that, actually, I am a socially anxious introvert who was hiding it all under a great deal of booze and – latterly – bravado.

Like most people, I haven’t loved much about the past year… but I have enjoyed the friendships that have become stronger because, to see each other, we have had to go for oneon-one walks. In many ways, I can now see that sitting on a park bench with a friend and a cup of coffee is one of the best ways to socialise.

There’s no shouting, no interruptions, no having to shoo away anything other than other people’s dogs. We don’t have to get dressed up, or wear uncomfortable high heels. And because we are so pleased to be out of the house, we don’t need to warm up with small talk. These “social” occasions go straight to the heart of the matter – how are you doing, and how can we help each other to feel a bit better?

I’ve witnessed more vulnerability from some friends in the past year than I have in two decades of attending parties with them.

Tears, buckets of lovely, healing tears. Honesty, buckets of lovely, healing honesty. And the relief of being able to admit to them that I am a bit of a hermit, and that’s really OK.

When this horror show is over – and soon it will be over! – I don’t have to make up excuses to get out of parties, or gigs. I can just not go to them. I can say: “I’m sorry, but if one good thing has come out of this then it’s that I’ve realised I actually rather like being in bed at 9pm, reading a good book. Could we maybe go for a walk one morning instead? It will be just like it was when we were in lockdown, only without the fear that we are committing a crime by buying a takeaway coffee.”

And we will laugh, and remember those strange old days when a pandemic taught us that life’s too short to be spent doing things we don’t want to be doing. And then we will raise a glass – or, in my case, a cup of coffee – to that.

Sitting on a park bench with a friend and a coffee is one of the best ways to socialise