I don’t mind some party games. I can spend quite a thoughtful evening guessing what’s in the matchbox and I’m terribly good at ‘Bird, Beast, Flower’. But ‘come to a party’ can mean so many different things. At some we stand around talking, sipping, nibbling and the only game we play is keeping one eye on the door in case an absolute dish suddenly arrives. Well, yes, I know that for most of us the solid, dependable figure over by the soda syphon is one’s spouse. But surely this need not preclude ten minutes’ deeply pulsating chat about the weather with – say – Robert Redford?
At another sort of party, ladies with draped dickie fronts and mauve face powder leap up with little cries of ‘Anyone for Flip the Kipper?’ Honestly. I have even been to an all-female do where the lady in charge said, ‘Oh goody, we’ve just got time for a quick game of Sardines.’
‘Must dash,’ I gabbled. They were a worthy group but I just didn’t see myself squeezed bust to bust in the boiler room with the Hon Sec.
At the other end of the social spectrum there are parties at which people turn up and plonk down on sofas, chairs and all round the walls. Then they just sit, waiting.
I am at a loss on these occasions. Does one offer to tap dance? Or yodel? Or spin the plate? At these do’s, folk wear woollies, the record player is broken and the hostess is having a super time in the kitchen with – well, if not Robert Redford, at least the pick of what is available. You can hear them out there, laughing and lobbing anchovies at each other. Meanwhile, the rest of us sit, clutching warm, empty wine glasses until, in desperation, we lean across and say brightly, ‘I just love your cardigan. Did you knit it yourself?’
There are gameless parties, too, where the sexes remain rigidly divided. The ladies sit at one end and chat about the lasting qualities of various washing-up liquids, while the men cluster round the drinks table being coarse and masculine and rather splendid. Every now and then someone is detailed to round me up and return me to my rightful end, but my motto is ‘mingle and be damned’, so off I swirl again as soon as they put me down.
I went through a trying phase, a few years back, when I became passionately attached to self-analyzing party games and quizzes. I met myself as I really am. I discovered that I am the romantic-Robert Browning-pony-and-trap type. (In fact, I was marked down by more than one fellow guest as a full-blown cabbage rose.) I also found that I’m a rotten wife but David is an ideal husband. (I think it’s just possible that he rigged that evening.)
I also met a wide circle of my friends and acquaintances as they really are. One pretty blond girl is now known, fairly generally, as ‘Old Sludge’ because her views on sex were revealed through a deeply psychological word association game in which sex equalled water equalled sludgy old ponds.
I used to get telephone calls at least once a week from friends, especially Americans, saying ‘Hi, could you just give me a rundown on that psychological game you played with us the other night? We’ve been invited to those stuffy Plodhammers and I’d certainly like to unravel their ids a little.’
A similar party game listed a chosen guest’s attributes in terms of flora, fauna, music, minerals, etc. But we discovered that it is unwise to play it unless one is absolutely sure of the victim’s stability.
Excitable ladies have been known to stamp off home because they’ve been put down as a daffodil when they’ve always seen themselves as a lupin.
Nowadays one hears an awful lot about wife-swapping parties. Or are they, like solid gold bath-taps, more talked about than actually gone in for?
I suppose it is just possible that some sprightly folk go around saying ‘Pssst, fancy my Gladys?’ Among Eskimos, of course, it is apparently a matter of custom and common courtesy. And really, with all that permafrost and sighs of ‘not blubber casserole again!’ they deserve whatever diversions they can manage to drum up.
The British way of life, however, is not yet so all-embracing or, if it is, then so far not one husband or wife has approached us with a furtive ‘Pssst’.
And I certainly don’t see myself, or my chosen mate, dropping cryptic hints or putting any strangely-worded postcards into the tobacconist’s window, thanks all the same.
While I grant that exchanging a sexy glance at a party can do more for one’s complexion than any amount of hormone cream, the real value of a social gathering, for me, lies not in the company nor the games they play but in the preparation.
From the moment the invitation arrives until the day itself, my life is a disciplined affair. Quite simply, my favourite current party gear is a size 14. I am a size 16. I bet no one gets through more crispbreads than I do in party season. (Eventually they taste like asbestos dinner mats.) But once I am lowered into my super black and white Biba ensemble and all zips are padlocked tight, I feel great. Breathless, but great.
And if I glide carefully over some festive threshold and put away more than two chicken vol-au-vents then I’m afraid kipper flipping would be a physical impossibility even if, unaccountably, I did ever happen to feel up to it.
These days even ‘Bird, Beast, Flower’ has to be played from a standing position.