Country life
Queen of cool
Leanda de Lisle
In London my four-year-old goddaughter lives in a social whirl and gets invited to parties in nightclubs where the grown-ups drink cocktails while the children play with pythons. Her mother thinks it is quite hor- rible and I can see why, but I'm sure little Laetitia will grow up into an assured teenager — something I would dearly have liked to be.
I was brought up with my siblings in a house surrounded by woodland and I attended a nursery school with nine pupils, so there weren't a lot of other children around. To compensate I would occasion- ally be sent off to kiddies' parties given by my parents' friends. A room full of strangers still turns my innards to water (or, possibly, gin and tonic). There was pass-the-parcel, jelly and chocolate fingers, but I longed to be inside my favourite yew hedge.
Nanny was most unsympathetic, `Ach,' she would say (well, she was German), `Ach — who you tink vill look at you?' Nobody, I hoped.
At the age of nine I had my first experi- ence of a London party — the Feathers Ball. It was black tie, with hats, and the girls turned up in Biba dresses and crushed velvet caps. I was sent in my white commu- nion dress and a tiara. It proved difficult to look cool, and cool is so important, even at nine.
My eldest son is now exactly that age and is finding it very difficult to keep up with the more street-wise London boys at his prep school. For a while he discovered sar- casm, which really didn't work in a boy who still believes in Father Christmas, 'Like, that's so likely,' he would respond to his five-year-old brother's opinion on how Father Christmas got into the house, 'He magics through the roof. It's obvious.'
He will need to become a more convinc- ing know-it-all before his teens, when all the county mothers get together to organ- ise discotheques for their single-sex- educated offspring. My parents assure me that in the Forties and Fifties these were sophisticated affairs — all champagne and jewelled stomachers. By my time, in the Seventies, the days of court shoes and con- versation were well and truly over.
I was sent to one local bash in my moth- er's black velvet column dress, with a white feather trim. 'You look as if you've stuffed your hands through a pair of chickens,' some youth informed me. There were brown corduroy jackets, Laura Ashley smocks, orange squash punch and various tricks to encourage us to dance.
For example, each girl would be told to leave one shoe in the middle of the room, then each boy would have to pick one and match it to its owner — their dancing part- ner. The script was Cinderella, but the pic- ture pure Hammer House of Horror. By the end of the evening you were either hid- ing in the loo or clamped like a goldfish to someone's spotty face, the latter being the mark of a good party and a decent quantity of squash punch.
Still, I suppose it was a preparation for the debutante season in London after we left school. I was used to the dress prob- lems by then — 'Did you sleep in that dress? I saw you wearing it on Tuesday.' Unfortunately, a witty riposte invariably escaped me. Laetitia, on the other hand, will be unfazed by anything by the time she is in double digits. She will be a queen of cool.
If only I could think how to give my boy the same Teflon protection. Perhaps at their next birthday party I'll have belly- dancers with Smarties in their tummy but- tons. Or perhaps I'll just leave them to play in the hedges until they are 25.
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