Carol’s Column

C’mon – it’s nearly Christmas, let’s have another swinging party

In case you didn't know, there are 329 days to Christmas and the party season.

Mind you - I'm still recovering from the last festivities.

With the rest of swinging South Africa, we made merry into the early hours of many mornings. It’s taken its toll.

I haven't managed to open my eyes since New Year’s Eve. Everyone says I've missed nothing.

Do you remember the old days when parties were really parties, friends brought a bottle and everyone had a ball?

Times have changed.

Take the Cornish-Patley's party, one of those terribly posh affairs where the hostess got lost among the Pascual frills and jars of paté.

Conversation was sizzling.

I'd just attacked the shrimps in aspic when I heard a hee-hawing at my shoulder.

A tall, dark and ugly stranger was making movements with his mouth - was he talking to me?

He was.

"Darling, so where did you go for the holidays?" he said, "Plet, skiing or Mauritius?"

I pulled in my stomach, comfortable in its Woolworths original, and eyed him haughtily.

"Darling, we didn't go away, we stayed home this year."

"Home?" His eyebrows joined his receding hairline and his nostrils twitched frantically causing his monocle to drop into his drink.

He didn't notice. It looked like an ice cube anyway.

"Home?" he repeated, his voice like a braying donkey in a Stellenbosch farmyard.

"Who stays home for the holidays — how frightfully droll."

I could have told him our private jet had a slight prang just as we were leaving for the Maldives, or that my husband was allergic to ski instructors - but what the hell!

"Ag, man, we decided it would be such fun spending the hols at home you know.

"Seeing the sights of Joey's, strolling down Eloff Street, sunbathing at Wemmer Pan, licking lollies at Zoo Lake - it’s different."

In full swing I continued: "It's so dull going away for the holidays, everyone does it. I mean, last time we were at Plet, I recognised 2 721 faces and they were all familiar. How dreadfully boring."

He shook his head in wonder. "Fascinating, and fascinating," he said took a bite of a caviar blintz which stuck to his teeth making them look as if they had blackheads.

"We must talk again soon," and crunching his monocle, he wandered away.

Later, I recounted the story to my husband.

"The trouble with you," he said, "is that you're a stick in the mud. That's why you don't enjoy yourself at parties and fall asleep standing up. You should try and live a little."

"The last time I lived a little you had to bail me out of the Parkview police station."

He shrugged his shoulders and looked heavenwards. "Carol, living it up doesn't mean running starkers through the streets of Parkwood shouting ‘Ban the Bomb and P W Botha!’."

"So, I was feeling especially cheerful that night - it was just one of those things."

"You're telling me," he muttered, "you're telling me."

Life is short and my great-grandmother, when she inserted her false teeth, always told me that the first priority in life was to keep the home fires burning.

But Johannesburg parties always follow a predictable pattern.

For instance:

"Hello, haven't we met before?"

"No, I don't think so."

Blink, blink, yawn.

"I’m sure we have."

Yawn.

"No, I don't think so."

"Wasn't it at the Toppington-Browns, Klotzkies or Van der Humps?"

Yawn.

"Not as far as I can remember. I say, do you think you could possibly remove your hand from my cleavage."

"So sorry, I thought they were the olives, haw, haw."

I have tried to become a social asset - but it hasn't been a great success.

Only yesterday my husband commented on my lack of social prowess.

"Was it necessary to rush up to me the other night and say: ‘Let’s leave this dreadful party immediately, it's so deadly. I want to go home and read a book!’?"

I shrugged. "Did I know it was the host and hostess you were talking to?"

You can’t win.

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