Country life
Weekend whinges
Leanda de Lisle
People love to be invited to house par- ties in the country and they love, even more, to complain about them. How dull it would be to spend a comfortable weekend that would leave you bereft of any stories about the wind whistling through your bed- room walls, the marvellously dated nursery food and your host's eccentric views. Equally, those of us who give house parties hold somewhat ambivalent attitudes to our guests.
When you live in a house full of empty bedrooms, surrounded by idyllic country- side, you feel not merely that you wish to have people to stay, but that you ought to. One Derbyshire hostess throws her house parties during Lent. She will ring up her neighbours and say, 'I'm doing one of my penance weekends. Can you come to din- ner?' It is not really the weekend, but its anticipation and all the preparation that we can't stand.
The week before is spent worrying about what to do with our guests. Take them for walks? It's bound to rain. Visit a stately home? It sounds so worthy. Are there any antique fairs going on? People used to the one in Grosvenor House will be appalled by the kitsch tat that is produced for sale in the country. We could take them riding but the hunters are supposed to be resting until August. Perhaps we should just stagger from one enormous meal to another.
I spend Fridays cooking so these meals can appear without apparent effort. By that evening my feelings of ill will have crys- talised into deep resentment. If only people could arrive at a convenient time — say a quarter to eight. Unfortunately, they never do. The most unpopular guests are those who turn up at tea-time when you are just looking forward to washing egg and flour out of your hair.
My parents and in-laws endure this quite frequently as so many of their friends have retired. Still, they are experts at making these nightmare 5 o'clock visions disappear until dinner time. 'You must be desperate for a bath,' they say as they propel them upstairs. For some reason, my friends arrive pre-washed. Anyway, offering baths is quite useless if they come armed with a baby — which is the common excuse for arriving early.
`Baby is ready for bye-byes,' I state as firmly as I dare, but my hopes invariably fall on stony ground. Baby wants his sushi supper, or whatever it is the Notting Hill fraternity are feeding their children on this week.
Most of our guests, however, are nailed to their desks by their blood-sucking employers until late and are thus unable to make it here until between ten and mid- night. One of our neighbours refuses to let such unfortunates into the dining-room. Anyone who appears after eight finds him- self locked in the kitchen with a flask of soup.
I just make sure I'm ready for bed and greet them in my pyjamas. I wear earrings and a jumper too. I used to hope that peo- ple would think I was wearing some kind of American lounge wear, but after 11 years in the sticks, I'm beyond caring.
When the guests do finally arrive, we whisk them into the drawing-room, where they sit on the sofas, clutching gin-and-ton- ics and wearing that slightly shell-shocked expression people bear after several hours on the Ml. This gives my husband and me the perfect opportunity to talk at them, fighting for conversation space as we unload all the unconnected thoughts that have built up since we last saw any- body.
It is about the time our friends start slip- ping a few words in edgeways that we remember just how much we do enjoy hav- ing them to stay (and their delightful chil- dren). I expect that it is the same time that they start building up anecdotes about our smelly dogs, flat tonic and supposed eccen- tricities.
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