A SMILE COSTS NOTHING

1 The pressure to pinpoint that perfect dreamy overseas location is off this year. You’re on home ground now, and you know the score – so you can just relax and have fun in 2021. Just remember the rules:

1 Adopt a relentlessly cheerful expression and keep saying, over and over, if necessary: ‘Isn’t this lovely?’

2 More than three days of clement weather and newspaper headlines will be screaming: ‘Heatwave! Hosepipe ban!’

3 Your neighbours may well have returned from Portugal with all-over tans, but they will also have spent six times more than you did in Cornwall. And, anyway, Kynance Cove looks just like Costa Paradiso after a couple of scrumpies.

4 When others refer to their trip to Blackpool/the Outer Hebrides as a ‘staycation’ – and, rest assured, they will do this – smile sweetly as you point out that, actually, a ‘staycation’ surely means having a vacation by staying in your own home, not travelling hundreds of miles away.

5 If you find yourself struggling to enjoy eating a stodgy pasty as rain drips down your neck, try to conjure up a vision of Honolulu, and reassure yourself: ‘There’s always next year.’