'Tis the season! LIFE OF THE PARTY

MICHELE A’COURT REVEALS THE SECRETS TO SUCCESSFUL SOCIALISING

Last week at one of those fancy annual get-togethers various industries do at this time of year, I saw a writer I admire very much. We don’t know each other that well, but we’ve been bumping into each other for decades in rooms like this, and I read his stuff and watch it on the TV, and he’s just generally brilliant and New Zealand is lucky to have him.

We grabbed each other for a hug (it was a huggy kind of party) and asked each other (as we’ve always done) how we were, and simultaneously rolled our eyes (as we all do now) at the madness that is 2020. There will be particularities to our lives, of course, but fundamentally we all know what this has been like – universally weird and terrifying, but also unifying and, by crikey, aren’t we lucky when you take a global look around.

That middle six months, I told him, had been pretty munted, but now, “It’s like normal life again, just with more gratitude.” That’s very good, he said, have you written that down? I told him I hadn’t yet, I’d just put it that way for the very first time, but I probably would, since he’d liked it. And here we are.