Butterfly

Today

Becky's Facebook status today bemoans the fact that, not only does she not have stacks of invitations, those that she has are all on one day. David suggested that this allows her to appear to be a terrific social butterfly with little effort.

In My Day

I remember the day we went to three parties, all on Easter Saturday, I think in 1979. We had a babysitter, in the form of Beatrice, so why not party the night away? The first was the 18th birthday party of a friend that Paul had met through the ambulance service. Her name was Fiona and she was a nursing auxiliary at a residential care home. She was drop-dead posh and famous for the incident with the false teeth and for her large number of concurrent boyfriends of a range of ages and marital status whose presence in the house at all times of day or night was tolerated by her easy-going mother. The guests at the party seemed to be either family or said boyfriends, which made Paul and me feel a little bit out of it. After I'd broken the cheese knife on the huge Stilton and then been embarrassed by fond references to her baby days, we decided that it was time to go on to the next do.

With two more parties to go to we had to plan which would be the best place to end up the night. There were a number of issues to consider; driving, eating and the general party-ishness of the event. While Fiona's was reasonably close to home, it certainly didn't promise to be a frolic. And there was that matter of the broken Stilton knife.

Priding myself on my memory as I do, I regret to say that I don't really remember the second one - I think that we more or less put our heads around the door before buzzing off to the final one at Lynda's. Lynda was also a friend of Paul's from the hospital and also had a cut-glass accent although it was inclined to slip when she became drunk.

She was fond of partying, despite or maybe because of her husband's long absences on business in Qatar, and we could be sure of lively company, plenty of food, drink and dancing. I was feeling pretty jolly, having lost my post-Becky weight, and treated myself to some new clothes and I accepted compliments and invitations to dance with equal readiness.

Like Fiona's party, quite a number of the guests were Lynda's boyfriends past and present. But there was a better balance of age and the sexes and generally more sense that they were there for the fun.

How did we get home? I don't remember and didn't have to do the driving, but we got back with a sense of duty and pleasure both satisfied. And we've never had this delightful dilemma, since so go for it, Becky!