When was the last time you just hung out with friends? (And I don’t mean a dinner booked two months in advance)

‘There’s a skill to having a good hang, to being a good hanger – to go with the flow,’ Brigid Delaney writes. Photograph: Maskot/Getty Images

A few years ago I had one unexpected, glorious day with a friend whose new corporate job had swallowed him whole.

I was between jobs – and he had allergies which gummed up his eyes with goo. It was his company’s headshot day and he looked too hideous to photograph, so he called in sick.