the times Saturday December 4 2021
We e ke n d 3
advised against snogging (I think that
word rather dates her) under the mistletoe
is not on the guest list.
I say it’s time to say “bah humbug” to
Hogo. Yes, you can have Michelin-starred
meals delivered to your door by underpaid
bicycle couriers, and cocktails sent round
packed in dry ice, but you can’t get takea-
way friends, or even frenemies. Nobody
ever went to bed after a Hogo evening
cocooned in the warm glow of knowing
that they are surrounded by friends and
their life is ineffably enhanced by all those
little moments of connection that make a
good party.
Writing this piece is clearly a hostage to
fortune — we may all be wearing hazmat
suits by Christmas — but even if I have to
spend my birthday in my bubble I will at
least have made the effort to celebrate, and
I am keeping my champagne on ice.
I love parties... apart from these kinds
Baby shower, dinner party? No thanks, says Polly Vernon
L
et me be clear, I adore
parties. I adore getting
dressed up, then getting
just the right amount of
drunk. I adore flirting
(which I’m good at) and
dancing (which I’m not).
I’ve perfected the French exit (slipping
away unnoticed once I’m sure the
party has peaked, which I think is very
chic), and sending a charming text of
thanks to my host the next day, once
my hangover has abated (although
never a handwritten notelet. That’s
trying too hard).
Yet it occurred to me some years
before Covid put the kibosh on our
socials, even, that a lot of the things
masquerading as “parties” — ie
situations where you may have a
good time — are nothing of the sort.
Either their structure or their
intention, or both, is conceived in
such a way as to ensure you have a
meh time at best, then resent the cost
of the Uber home; that they’ll eat
into an evening far better spent with
something bloody and South Korean
off Netflix, while obliging you to
consume alcohol units you’d far
rather reserve for something actually
properly fun.
With rare exceptions, I’ve realised
there’s remarkably little point in:Dinner parties
Absolutely beyond me why anyone
persists with these farces. I’ve never
been to one that wouldn’t have been
much better had we all just gone to
Some Restaurant (where you can
choose food you actually want to
eat rather than have someone’s
“signature” foisted on you, where
no one need feel obliged to be nice
about the host’s kitchen island,
which looks like all the other
kitchen islands, and where there’ll
be people entirely unrelated to
your group knocking around on other
tables, about whom you might safely
bitch, sotto voce, as opposed to unsafe
sotto voce bitching about the vague
acquaintance on the other side of the
kitchen island from you plus one, and
which also ends up being cheaper, once
you’ve factored in the emotional cost of
all the hyperbole one is supposed to
spout re: hors d’oeuvres).
Never mind the exhaustive repeating:
“Oh, is this from Ottolenghi? Oh I love
Ottolenghi!”/the Nigella Mee-cro-waa-
vay joke. DPs are hell. Hell in circuits;
slow, soul-crushing swirls round his
house, then her house, then her house,
then (oh God, no.. .) yours, at which
point you lose your mind trying to track
down adequate quantities of Lina Stores
pasta, because what will everyone think
if you just get M&S; have a “crise” about
whether anyone Does Dips Any More?/
if tapas qualifies as a superspreader
event; end up on the wrong end of the
DP-dedicated WhatsApp group because
you forget to Ask About Allergies; and
find yourself wondering if Kitchen Island
Inferiority is a thing, because if it is, you
definitely have it. This is no one’s idea of
a good time.Reunions
They bring nothing, really, but poorly
concealed shock over how badly
everyone else has aged during Covid
(“The crisis has not been kind to him,”as a friend said recently of someone
she’d met for the first time since March
2020), and an absolute refusal to wonder
if they’re thinking the same about you,
which they definitely aren’t.Fancy dress
What people do if they can’t dress well
when left to their own devices.Work parties
Once, definitely fun, but now? In the age
of new variants, and cancellation, with
historical interactions and half-buried
emails hanging over every one of us
like dribbling, perilous stalactites and
alcohol easing us closer and closer to
the moment of divulging Our Truth to
the last person who should hear it?
Just fraught.Anything that requires
the filling in of a Doodle
poll to facilitate it
Accursed, relatively recent technological
advancement that demands invitees
specify a range of dates and times that
suit them, thereby pandering to the
flakiness of the modern age/diminishing
opportunities to pretend you can’t
make a certain thing, because you’ve got
A Clash. Also: it’s just more admin. No
one needs more admin. Parties certainly
do not need more admin.Any form of
shower
Baby. Bridal. Gender-reveal
parties, which aren’t technically
“showers” but are definitely cut
from the same cloth, that cloth
being a fundamentally
narcissistic urge on the part of
whoever’s pregnant or getting
married, or whatever the hell
else, to engineer more and more
occasions at which they’re the
centre, the focus, the special, the
showered, because if they don’t,
what on earth will they put on
Instagram, and how will they get
people to give them more stuff?
Although — as obviously
grotesque as that all is — it isn’t
my issue with showers. My issue
with showers is that they are, by
definition, not fun. All latitude
for fun has been pre-engineered
out of them. No one ever got
drunk then slept with someone
inadvisable at a shower, and surely,
when you come down to it, that
is the point of any party ever
thrown — the potential for it at
least (even if it goes unrealised).
Showers are supremely sanitised
social experiences, your Stepford
Party Person’s idea of a good time,
and enough to make me wish I was
on a hen do (which I don’t like
much, either, unless there’s karaoke,
obviously).Save the dates
I’d rather Doodle poll.Significant birthdays
past 21
No one really wants them. No one
wants to have died first either, but it
never ceases to amaze/appal anyone
that they’re really, truly, actually
30 after all, never mind every damn
zero that follows it. Significant birthdays
are less celebrations, more acts of
teeth-gritted endurance, and everyone
who’s there knows it and is dreading
having to do one for themselves
imminently, unless they’re young, in
which case they’re just enjoying not
being old, and congratulating themselves
on the knowledge they never will be.Awards ceremonies
Sure, they look glitzy and shiny and fun;
all they actually are is ruthless ambition,
schadenfreude and spite, dressed up in
musty black tie. And those are the good
ones. The bad ones are just dull — as in:
existentially dull. As in: dull enough to
make you wish you were at a dinner
party (although perhaps not one of
your own).
If you’re shortlisted for an award, your
fear of losing out to someone you loathe
will leave you quite incapable of eating
the very poor, catered chicken that silver
service places before you with the
reverence of a holy relic, which will
mean you get drunker than you intended
on the v poor fizz you are more than
capable of drinking (it transpires), which
will mean you respond appallingly on
losing your award, or worse yet, on
winning it, and I write as someone who
has done both, loudly. If you’re not
shortlisted... What on earth are you
doing at an awards ceremony? Go home!I’ve never been
to a dinner
party that
wouldn’t have
been better had
we all just gone
to a restaurant
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zeroPolly VernonMARK HARRISON FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE