SORRY, INTROVERTS – I’M NOT GIVING UP SEQUINS AND SOCIALISING FOR ANYONE

Another day, another diktat, this time from health protection chief Dr Jenny Harries, telling us not to socialise “when we don’t particularly need to”. As soon as I heard this, I wondered whether that included my dinner party this weekend – and I concluded that, for me, it felt very necessary.

During the first lockdown, people spoke of all the high-minded things that they missed. Me, I missed getting tipsy and talking to random strangers at parties.

And the apex of unnecessary-buttotally-necessary socialising is the month of December.

I love it all: the email drop of invitations as the days get shorter, the outfit planning, the first drink and the one too many, even the fuzzy head the next day. At Christmas, we get to excavate clothes worn only annually, the bad jumpers at daytime drinks with neighbours and the sequinned dress in the evening.

Covid taught us the value of close family and friends, but it has also shown me the importance of people we meet only once. It is with strangers that we can make those coincidental connections that reboot our thoughts and feelings.

A couple of Christmases ago, I ended up crying with a couple at a party as we relived the trauma of rehoming our delinquent dogs. I remember their dog’s name, Charlie, but not theirs, yet I will never forget how much better I felt the next day for having spoken to them.

When you snuffle out these random commonalities, it is exhilarating, like falling in love with none of the messy aftermath. You have them in the women’s toilets at clubs, over an illicit cigarette in the garden at a house party, or in the queue for drinks at a bar. It is these interactions that make us human.

This might sound shallow in the face of the profound dangers of a pandemic. “Why can’t you stay at home instead of killing granny?” we’re told by people who’ve always hated going out.

It is the revenge of the introverts – for most of history, they’ve been told they’re weird and wrong for preferring to hunker down, but at last their selfreliance became a strength.

But some of us feed on the exchange of energy with others in order to feel alive. Of course, I don’t need to drink mulled wine wearing my star-shaped earrings while listening to Michael Bublé – but I want to. I really want to.

So I will lateral-flow test, I will wear a mask in shops and on buses, I will wash my hands. But, as the Beastie Boys song title says, you gotta fight for your right to party!