Posh Party

This evening we went to London to the 50^th party of a friend of Christophers. It was held in the birthday boy’s art gallery. It was a posh-do. I am not used to posh parties. I feel a little bit like Eliza Doolittle – I get anxious that I might accidentally say something rude or swear and show myself up for the ill-bred girl I am. 

Worse still this party involved food, drink and expensive art all in the same room. Other guests were very at easy sauntering round looking at the paintings while drinking and saying clever things about the art. However, I was terrified that a combo of shiny floor, high heels and champagne would end in disaster so I spent a good deal of time concentrating on walking slowly and holding my champagne flute tightly in case I slipped and splashed booze on the Van Dyke. As a consequence I may have appeared slightly special needs. My other habit, when in situations like this, is that I have a tendency to find everything funny in the way that a ten year old might so I have to fight the urge to giggle by biting my tongue (literally). For example a fellow guest asked ‘Do you collect?’ – meaning of course – art. While being flattered that he thought I looked classy (and rich) enough to qualify for this, my inner ten year old wanted to giggle and say ‘I used to collect stamps at school but it was boring, I also collect thimbles from stately home gift shops and I’ve loads of china Whimsies from the 1970s that I got with my pocket money – do you think they’re worth anything?’  Having drawn blood from biting my tongue hard enough to quash this urge, I managed a half grown up reply and thankfully the chap moved on to talk to someone more sophisticated than me.