We went to a party yesterday.
Of course I don’t mean the sort of party that half of my customers go to, the sort where you lie around on beanbags sniffing white powder off lavatory seats and listening to the sort of music that comes without much in the way of words and might reasonably be described as a wail with a background thudding noise.
It wasn’t that sort of party. It is many years since I went to that sort of party, and if I am honest, I didn’t enjoy them very much even when inspired by the reckless brainlessness of youth so certainly I wouldn’t expect to have a good time now that I am elderly and prone to indigestion afterwards.
Anyway, it was not a party like that, not least because obviously it was the weekend and my Saturday nights are always completely occupied by ferrying other people to and from parties. This has given me an opportunity to survey the results of partying at very close range, and I can tell you now that it has put me off the activity.
It was an afternoon party.
Also it was not on beanbags or lavatory seats. It was outdoors, in a bright, sunny field, in the gentle warmth of a peaceful Lake District summertime.
It was a family party.
It was not my family, except in an adoptive sort of way. It was a family party thrown by Mark’s uncle Edward and attended by pretty much the whole of his family, except Mark, of course, who was offshore and could not go.
Therefore I went to attend as his proxy.
Also I took Oliver and Emily with me, because Oliver is of course a legitimate blood-tie family member. As such, he has got a cast-iron right to stand among the ranks of the descendants of the little girl who was Lucie in Mrs Tiggywinkle.
She was Mark’s grandmother, and quite a few of the assembled family look a very lot like Beatrix Potter’s pictures of her.
I would be fibbing if I said that I was looking forward to it. I am not very good at socialising at the best of times, preferring very much to sit by myself, unobserved, and watch proceedings. I was very glad of Oliver’s company for that reason.
Oliver has an easy, public-school confidence, accompanied by smiles and firm handshakes, and can easily be relied upon to behave impeccably. Everybody always comes away saying what a jolly nice chap he is, which he is, leaving me nodding and smiling agreeably, pleased not to have to make further conversational inroads.
Hence, of course I set off with some trepidation, but equally of course, in the end it was perfectly all right.
It was a splendid event. There was a marquee, and some fairground games, a miniature quad bike for the children, a stage for a band that was going to come and play later, a small wood burner around which everybody congregated when the sun went in, and long tables spread with an absolutely magnificent buffet.
Lots of people had brought tents, because of the impossibility of getting home after a raucously alcoholic event in the Lake District. Mark’s mother, who, I might add, is in her eighties, had been camping there since Tuesday, and seemed to be enjoying herself hugely. The children charged about and persuaded the quad bike to run on two wheels, and Oliver’s uncle gave Oliver’s great aunt a high-speed ride along the road on his motorbike, and everybody was having a lovely time.
I was truly impressed.
We could not stay very long, because of going to work. Oliver and Emily played on the fairground games and then dived off to splash around in the beck with the rest of the Younger Generation. Oliver caught a crayfish, which nipped him, crossly, so he put it back.
I settled myself happily on a garden chair not far from the wood burner, where I drank several cups of tea. Indeed, somehow the entire afternoon seemed to slip away as I chatted to other grandmothers and great aunts and second cousins, all of whom had plenty to say, and we luxuriated in doing nothing whatsoever with sunshine and dinner provided into the bargain.
All summer afternoons draw to a close, and this one was no exception, in the end we had got to go to work.
I would have stayed longer if I could.
Have a photograph.
