I’d love to make some new pals. But why is it so hard? | Anita Chaudhuri

Novel experiences with new people can apparently slow the march of time. Great! If only there wasn't all that small talk to navigate ...

It's the time of year when my WhatsApp starts pinging with group notifications about pre-festive social fixtures. Don't get me wrong, I love nothing more than a night out with old friends. It's just that it has recently dawned on me that while long-established social rituals are deeply comforting, particularly in uncertain times, if the characters in your life never change and the locations stay pretty much the same, socialising can sometimes feel like Groundhog Day, only with more wine.

I realised this as I set up a Doodle poll for my college flatmates to try to find a Saturday night when we might by some miracle all be available before December. It's futile, because I know that this won't be possible and that we will end up having dinner at 10pm on the Monday before Christmas in some godforsaken bar near a train station we can all get to. One of us will arrive an hour late and he will always have an excuse so dazzling that we won't mind. Another can be relied upon to order an extra bottle seconds before last orders which we will all pretend to be cross about the next morning. We've been upholding this tradition since Margaret Thatcher was in power.