Taking advantage of the Tier 2 rule of six outside, a few of us gathered in a friend’s garden to sing her a surprise happy birthday. We found the birthday girl submerged in a hired hot tub beneath a gazebo, flute of fizz in hand and a jalfrezi delivery on the way. 

Apparently, jacuzzies are like gold dust right now. The company she hired it from is booked up until the new year. Outdoor log burners, chimineas and firepits are also flying off the shelves as hardy Brits choose to wrap up and catch up around the flames rather than festering on their lonesome indoors. Storms and sleet are now seen as a mere inconvenience rather than cause for cancellation. 

Since outdoor socialising seems to be the way forward for the foreseeable, I’ve been racking my brains for ways to gather without breaking any rules. Obviously, Tier 3 is a different matter entirely, when I think we’ll be relegated to the realms of sour dough and Skype-ing again, but Tier 2, as far as I understand it, at least gives us the opportunity for some mask-to-mask time, with another five people, in the open air. 

There are a variety of alfresco activities available, but most involve daylight and sobriety. Unless you’re a scout leader, a moonlit march in mid-winter isn’t necessarily going to float your boat any more than a freezing floodlit plunge pool. These things might be good for our circulation and pores but it’s fun we want, not frostbite.  

Perhaps we could play reverse strip poker under a tarpaulin, where the person with the most layers of thermals on at the end wins the chance to barbecue the bikini they never got to wear this summer. Or spin the hot water bottle with the champ stuffing it up their jumper for five minutes. I’m sure there must be something fun to be done with heated hand warmers, especially if there’s a vat of mulled wine sloshing around somewhere.   

At least when you’re outside, there’s no need for fancy new clothes, which is lucky for me because my wardrobe contents have remained unchanged since Christmas, bar two pairs of joggers. I’ve spent more on Dolmio than I have on dresses this year, though I’m lucky enough to have a shopaholic friend who gifted me a couple of cracking coats recently. Thanks Kate.  

But Kate’s coats were too posh for something my sister lined up last Sunday. Waterproofs were in order as we trekked across fields in Oxenhope with an alpaca apiece. Honestly, it’s a thing. After safety briefings about how to hold them and what to do if they spit, I was loaned Sovereign, with fabulous feathery lashes, white woolly hair and an overbite. We wandered up the Worth Valley with a bag of carrot batons and were rewarded with a wonderful view of Leeshaw reservoir. Now I call that a lockdown win – and I wasn’t even spat on.