Home life
Reluctant participant
Alice Thomas Ellis
am again wondering why we go t0 parties where we have to stand up because most of the chairs have been removed 111 order to make room for us to do so. It !: worse for women, because they feel incumbent on themselves to wear small shoes which are seldom comfortable, and
I
a cannot see the fun in standing up with a rar; in the face, a glass of (mostly despicable/ hooch in one hand and something incle6.11; able stuck on a stick in the other, bellowing pleasantries at people whom one has a needling feeling one probably knows quo.,' well but cannot put a name to. (o! inability to remember who my friends ar' is the reason I call absolutely everYbl darling.) And — you keep asking yoilrs. to worriedly — will you ever find a two take you home to bed and what will it CO Almost certainly your children, on learning f you are going out, will have taken most °, the readies to buy fish and chips. by membering this, you torture yourself u/, wondering whether they have safely re' turned from the chippie and have had sense to lock the door. I sometimes ue scribe my unwillingness to leave home it agoraphobia, but really it's because ,„ makes my feet hurt and is iriordinateyd expensive. Besides I usually get corner* by some crasher who wants to talk about art or music or something and I never really want to do that, especially not in a high-pitched scream and on the hoof. I know one person who I always consi- dered had the social graces of a wart-hog, but I'm beginning to disapprove of him less. I think he's really quite sensible. Faced with the prospect of boredom he doesn't even attempt to converse but eats everything organic in sight, hoovering his way through the olives and crisps and quite possibly finishing off with the chrysanthe- mums. Then he goes home to sleep, having had a (sort of) free meal and not having sung for it at all.
My beloved Rosamond was at a party the other evening where all the chairs had been roped off. Nothing daunted, she went and sat in one, but in the meantime she had Unwarily accepted a snack from a tray and it had turned out to be a lobster claw. So there she was stuck with the beastly thing and nowhere to dispose of it. I have a shamefaced feeling that if it had been me I would have pushed it down the side of the chair, but luckily Rosamond's grandson was also present and he relieved her of it. It didn't end there, however, because he couldn't think what to do with it either, and she could see him debating with himself whether to sling it in the pool Which graced the centre of the room. These Problems do nothing to enhance the quali- ty of life.
The quality of life is not of the highest at the moment anyway. We are all suffering from the lack of ultra-violet rays which have been in short supply all year and everybody has a glum, grey look and a tendency to crack at the smallest thing. Our judgment is impaired. Mine is any- way. Faced with the problem of what to Wear to parties on top of the easily creased .little frocks one wears underneath, I l'eught myself a coat of quite spectacular vulgarity from a stall in the market. It is mock snow-leopard, and the third son remarked reproachfully that I should con- sider the quantity of nylon sacrificed to go into its construction. Still, at least no one else is tempted to borrow it. The daughter recently mislaid a brand new coat and insists that the last time she saw it her father was wearing it. Everyone in this family is always wearing everyone else's , eat, but I can't really see someone in his uaughter's school gear. He himself has lost about 25 coats over the course of our acquaintance, leaving them in buses and Jams and restaurants and other people's houses and managing to retain only a dreadful frayed old thing which even the It°eal winos would not be tempted to ?rr°w; yet despite this we are, to coin a Phrase, very overcoated. There are dozens t the things in this house and I don't know where most of them came from. I am reluctant to bundle them all off to Oxfam lu case their owners come back for them but am going to choose a date later in the year when the ultra-violet rays have im- proved my resolution and no one is likely to freeze to death, and then I shall give them all away.
In the meantime we are using the per- fectly good bicycle which suddenly appeared in the garden, and I am going to wear the smart white trousers which I found in my wardrobe when I was hunting for something to wear to a party and which I have never seen before in my life. Mysteriously acquiring things is even more puzzling than losing them, though less annoying.
I'm supposed to go to two parties tonight and I wish I could say that I was going to wear my new trousers and go on the bieycle, thereby saving the taxi fare, but I never learned to ride a bicycle, considering it undignified, so I think I'll have an early night.