In or out? The question traditionally posed by bar staff in relation to the Angostura bitters that make a pink gin pink could as easily be asked, at this time of year, about the location for its consumption. Not that I personally consume pink gins — of this sort anyway. But gin incarnadined with Campari, to which is added either tonic (a Pink) or red vermouth (a Negroni) — this is a different matter altogether.

Both are fine summer drinks, the first especially, and as such ideal for al fresco swigging. It occurred to me to order a Negroni on Sunday, when I was having lunch on the terrace of Quod — perhaps the best location in Oxford for outdoor eating. The cocktail does, in fact, figure on the list of drinks offered there, with the good taste that characterises this restaurant. In the end, though, I thought it seemed rather heavy on such a hot day and stuck to the house white wine, which in any event was a better accompaniment to roast pork.

That it can sometimes be rather hard to enjoy food out of doors was clear from a cri de coeur sent to me last week by a reader, detailing her experiences at Oxford Castle.

I quote: “I got back from Oxford last night spluttering and wondered who to tell and thought of you and The Oxford Times.

“Last night, I was with three friends, two Australians and a Canadian. We wanted supper at 6pm before going to Creation’s Antony and Cleopatra (a totally different experience where everyone was eager to help, provide or just smile). It was, at least by English standards, a balmy evening.

“We went to the Castle. First stop The Living Room; people seated but no sign of staff. We looked inside — no staff. We left after about five minutes.

“We then went to Prezza, not very full, ‘Can we eat outside?’' ‘No; the people by the window are cold, so I can’t open the terrace doors.’ No attempt was made to help us or suggest we eat inside as we made for the exit.

“Pizza Express was next. ‘Can we eat outside please?’ The ‘no’ was at least polite. They were short of staff, so couldn’t serve outside. We ended up at the tapas café [La Tasca, presumably], perfectly nice but not where we had intended to be 15 minutes earlier.”

On the same evening, at around the same time, I was in London, eating confit of pork outside a favourite pub on the way to Holland Park for a performance of Rigoletto.

The place in question is the Elephant and Castle, in Holland Street, Kensington. It is run by Nicholson’s, a usually reliable company that also operates both the Crown and the Chequers in Oxford city centre.

I have always felt rather at home there, and this week discovered why this might be. A review of the pub in Time Out began: “The crossroads of family homes and little shops the Elephant and Castle calls home could almost be a quiet village in Oxfordshire, a comparison on which you might muse as you sip a pint of London Pride or Doom Bar (joined by guests such as Thornbridge Jaipur or Stonehenge Sign of Spring) on the terrace.”

Actually, the beer that Rosemarie chose was none of these but instead rather a novelty — a light and refreshing ale called Wanderer whose clip boasted it was brewed “Up North”. In fact, it was from Michigan in the USA.

On Saturday night, we were drinking in a quiet village in Oxfordshire — surely one of the prettiest in the county. En route to the Half Moon at Cuxham, where we enjoyed a fine dinner that I’ll be featuring on the restaurant page soon, we stopped for a glass of wine in the sunshine at the Lord Nelson, in Brightwell Baldwin.

This admirably run establishment received a rare rave review earlier in the year from the generally atrabilious Sunday Times restaurant writer A.A. Gill. He wrote: “I think I may have found in the Lord Nelson that fabled, romanticised, mourned and bucolically idealised pub, at the end of the nostalgia rainbow.”