The Problem With Parties

The Notting Hill Carnival Looms....

The Notting Hill Carnival comes to my locale this bank holiday weekend. Although I am happy that the carnival exists, I shan’t be attending. The reason is simple, although rather heretical.

I don’t like parties.

Before you accuse me of being a curmudgeonly old man, I should stress that I have never liked parties. Even as a teenager I found them a largely tedious affair.

Probably the worst party I ever attended was my own, age 15, when I drank a bottle of Pernod before anyone arrived, passed out on the sofa, then woke up after everyone had left. People had amused themselves by applying make up to my somnolent face. I certainly needed it after the hangover arrived. I looked, and felt, like shit.

Obviously that is an aspect of parties that can be avoided. Getting excessively drunk is a foolish, albeit typical, teenage behaviour. The trouble was I didn’t much like parties when I was sober, or half drunk, or in any condition whatsoever.

There was one exception. On the rare occasions I managed to pair off with a member of the opposite sex, parties seemed to serve a purpose. They were dark and louche and more uninhibited than daily life. They were one of the rare marketplaces for romance, at least when you were single and in your teens and 20’s. Other than that, they seemed noisy, tiresome and full of meaningless small talk that seemed to go nowhere. And as I say, add a hangover to that, which was usually inevitable, and you can see why I didn’t always appreciate them. But I felt rather ashamed of the fact. After all, young people were meant to love parties. Only many years later did many of my contemporories confess to feeling exactly as I did. But it was taboo to admit it, lest one be accused of being a party pooper. Well now, I am happy to poop any party you invite me to.

As I got older the party was largely replaced by the dinner party, which I must say, I preferred greatly to the house party. The opportunity for conversation was much better, the food was a great improvement on peanuts and crisps and there was far less noise. However, even then I often found them a disappointment. Sometimes they were just dull - people banging on about house prices or what films they had seen - and sometimes they were just too competitive, everyone desperate to entertain everyone else and appear interesting. All the same, on the whole, I would count them on my list of Generally Good Things.