Whenever people form themselves into a group - whether to play cards, to go for a Sunday afternoon walk or to raise money for some worthy cause - they invariably feel the need to involve someone else in their activities: you.

All you want, on the other hand, is to be left alone. You don't want to come out to play. They must never know this because the moment they do, they will consider it a personal challenge to get you to join in.

Your escape is that you have a previous engagement - with yourself. Sunday afternoon, you explain regretfully, is the time you set aside every week to dig the garden/write poetry/do the accounts/play with the children/meditate. You always have and always will. You are, alas, a creature of habit and this weekly appointment with yourself is sacred. You have promised yourself that you will never break it and you cannot permit yourself to let yourself down.

If you don't fancy the idea of casting yourself into the role of creature of habit, then you will probably have to invoke the 'aversion therapy' excuse. Your explanation for declining to take part in the activity being proposed is that you have already done it to death. For them, it is fun; for you, it opens the floodgates of an unpleasant childhood memory.

For instance, 'My mother took me on ten-mile walks every day from the age of three and I've loathed walking ever since' is a perfectly good reason for wanting to watch television instead of being dragged up a hill by your energetic host and hostess.

'I loved poker until I spent four years in the Navy doing nothing else except playing poker' is an equally good reason for never sitting at a card table again.

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