I once went to a Christmas party in black stockings and a red dress. By some strange coincidence, the dress fitted me all over, the black stockings were in fashion and I was the star turn from the moment I inadvertently flung my Martini backwards into the fireplace.
‘By heavens,’ said an intense-looking male guest to our host, ‘I’ve always wanted to meet a girl like that!’
Interpreting this as praise, I went from strength to strength and I do believe I ended the evening on a table top doing some sort of impromptu tap dance to Ravel’s Bolero.
I never saw the intense guest again, which was probably just as well, because, who knows, perhaps we would have married and I would have been doomed to a life of dancing on table tops.
When we are single there is always the faint hope that we will go to parties and be confronted by one of the Richard Burtons of this world. With any luck he will begin to breathe heavily the moment we enter the room and, from then on, life will be a row of asterisks, to say the least.
But once we are married, we haven’t time for all that heavy breathing even supposing we do intercept the odd morale-boosting mating call.
And what’s the use anyway?
These days most of my panting is from sheer exhaustion and all my energy is directed toward making baby-sitting arrangements. False eyelashes are dabbed on recklessly at the last moment, beads are lassoed into position, and we are off.
Usually I prance into parties and am immediately trapped by a lady who thinks that I am somebody else.
‘My dear, I saw you in your sloop on Saturday,’ she screams.
‘Oh, that old thing,’ I murmur with a deprecating laugh. What can she mean, I am wondering wildly. The conversation veers off but the new tack is no less bewildering.
‘Wasn’t it terrible about poor Ethel?’ We all shake our heads sadly and then I am pounced upon by an elderly guest who insists that I hear about her leg. Eventually it is time to go home and I know all about her leg.
Meanwhile my husband has inadvertently flung his Martini at someone’s au pair who has come as Pola Negri and who can’t possibly be as decadent as she looks. At least I hope she can’t.
Our own parties tend to be family affairs. Nothing very racy happens unless you include ancient aunts who mistake the advocaat for custard and have to be helped upstairs.
Every year I incorporate several shillings-worth of mistletoe into the décor and I wait around for something pagan to happen but it never does. Not to me anyway.
I used to make quite ornate rings to hang in the hall but, while everyone else frolicked about under them, I would be trudging off to put away coats or to stir things in the kitchen. Even supposing I am ever tracked down out there, it is hard to scintillate over rapidly thickening white sauce.
And anyway there are too many children about at Christmas and they watch you, intently, the moment you flirt even the tiniest bit.
‘Mummy, why are you laughing so much,’ they pipe up, ‘you look silly.’
One friend of mine throws super parties and seems to have an unlimited assortment of bunk beds for visiting children. This last fact alone would give her a high friendship rating but she also has a way with her which brings out the best in her guests.
Sedate ladies in directoire knickers run themselves up chiffon culottes for her parties. Heavy men in local government leap into floral polo shirts. Harassed American fathers start clicking their fingers and making cha-cha noises as soon as they cross over the threshold.
I, not to be outdone, put on a pair of ear-rings like ceramic bathroom tiles and paint my toe-nails silver. (‘You look as if a snail has crawled over your feet,’ says Anna.)
My dress is an African print with strange African sentences incorporated into the design. And the first person I meet is an African, who reads my dress and stands in a doorway, shaking with laughter for the rest of the evening.
Never mind. It is a marvellous party. But I do hope the message I am wearing is something really witty – and not just an advert for Congolese custard powder.
As you can tell, my confidence is not what it was in those distant days of dancing on table tops.