PATRICIA NICOL: Who hasn t made a WhatsApp blunder? Recently, my husband messaged with a suggestion for our teenage son s birthday present. I responded querying the expense.
Author Patricia Nicol reveals a selection of the best books on Ukraine, including You Don t Know What War Is: The Diary Of A Young Girl From Ukraine by Yeva Skalietska
Author Patricia Nicol reveals a selection of the best books on ballroom dancing, including Watch Her Fall by Erin Kelly and The Turnout by Megan Abbott
Finally, I got to the pub. Twice, actually: once for a family dinner at a gastropub; once for a late afternoon ale at a park pop-up, a brisk wind blowing through the gazebo.
We might have gone sooner, had a pub visit not become so logistically laborious. Mask, check. Warm extra layers, check. Charged mobile for Covid app check-in and hands-free ordering, check.
Oh for those halcyon days when ‘Fancy a cheeky half?’ was the jump-off point to an easeful afternoon.
The Moon Under Water is a famous George Orwell essay describing his fantasy London pub. Two minutes from a bus stop, down a side-street, it is an ‘uncompromisingly Victorian’ gin-palace with tobacco-stained ceiling, upstairs dining and several ground-floor bars.
A friend tentatively beginning a new relationship in lockdown tells me it is like being in a Jane Austen novel . With all indoor mixing banned, all that is available to her and her suitor are socially distanced walks.
Is this such a bad way to have to navigate awkward first dates? Grim as it is for the hospitality industry to be unable to take Valentine s bookings, the truth is that eating and drinking with strangers can often be a fraught affair.
The rhythm of walking and lack of obligatory eye contact often promote easy conversation. With the sap rising and a burgeoning spring beckoning, the outdoors offers more conversational starters, too.