Last night, wandering around Liverpool Street to various Christmas work events, an awful thought began to dampen my normally fizzy festive spirit until my mood was as flat as a five-day-old warm glass of prosecco. Am I enjoying all this, I thought to myself, trudging from party to party making dreary small talk and being careful not to have more than half a drink at each event. Do I even like Christmas, or is it in fact a completely exhausting nightmare?
In the bad old days, when I was in my twenties, parties were a thing of joy and excess. I used to give them my absolute all. Often nights out would involve massive sound systems and waking up in fields with 10 new best friends.
I remember one party on a riverboat in the Thames which ended at 6am with everyone jumping into the water. I think most people made it back out.
Once, after a particularly wild wedding I woke up in a heap in my new leather trousers in the back of a car to the sound of an acquaintance who had kindly driven me back to London, saying “I’ve driven Anna round Hammersmith for the last hour. She doesn’t seem to have any idea where her flat is.” Parties used to be hilarious — and require days of recovery time.
Now I’ve got two young children and a job with a Catch-22 — to socialise in the evening and me to be at my desk by 7.30am. It’s a tightrope which means although I’m often at fun things I’m usually distracted by work or family commitments and I pretty much can’t ever be hungover. (Try getting up and out of the house for the 6.40am train across London on a hangover, trust me you won’t try that twice.)
“I can’t drink tonight,” I tell people briskly, or “I need to be in a taxi by 9pm”. Yup, I’m a class A bore these days. But then does anyone want a middle-aged drunk woman at a party anyway? Let’s be honest, not really.
Socialising used to be an occasional thing whereas these days commitments stack up like unpaid bills.
Christmas carol concerts, school drinks, work get-togethers. Sometimes the PCPD* is so bad that you’ll find me super-glued to my bed in Acton with a cup of tea watching TV typing barely credible WhatsApps to friends. “I’ve broken my leg,” I type, “I’ve gone blind in one eye,” “I’m so sorry to miss you all.”
