2000-12-04 - 22:58:03

�You�will leave him, and get your own place�I�ll come round sometime, and touch your cold face��

So a couple of weeks ago one of my friends asks me to go to a party. Being the not exceptionally reluctantly social being I am, I said, �Sure�. The day before arrives; I get a call from her. �I�d better explain�it�s a singles party.� My immediate reaction was, of course, I�d rather be throttled to death with my own small intestine, but, reader, I went.

I should have known it was going to be all I feared when my initial survival plan was scuppered at the first; the �shop� we stopped at on the way having no tequila. I opted for gin. We arrived, greeted by the organiser, a girl so huge (I swear I�m no body fascist, I�m just reporting the facts) she had trouble bending her arm sufficiently to raise her cigarette to her mouth. However, she was apparently worth her weight in, er, money, and had even hired a little cockney serving girl to take coats, pour drinks, be mistaken for a guest, etc. I got into an early altercation with said urchin as I hunted for ice � she came into the kitchen in a tizz with some bottles of wine, wondering which were red and which were white. I told her to keep the darker bottles out of the fridge. �I just don�t know my wine,� she bleated, though, obviously, abstract concepts of primary colour differentiation were a strain, too. Bless.

About 25 people arrive and, admittedly, there�s one really cute girl (tonight�s strictly hetero), though you apparently had to camp outside her the night before in order to get a turn at being rejected, so I missed out, and took my chances with the assorted flotsam and jetsam (my friend kindly abandoned me straight away) of DateUK.com, or whatever website they were all from. First woman was so posh she couldn't understand my northern idiom. (Me: �So what do you do?� Her: �I live in Chelsea.� � well, it�s nice work if you can get it, I suppose) The urchin lurched past with a tray of canapes in her hand and a lit cigarette in her mouth, creating a sufficient diversion for me to spend some quality time in the kitchen with my gin, disturbed only by two Irish guys who suggested that a career in Investment banking could be the answer to my problems. I don�t remember telling them I HAD problems � it must just be physically apparent by now.

The smoking servant appeared in my peripheral vision with two packets of frozen nibbles and an enquiring look, so I ducked back into the fray. Cute girl asked me for a light, but was quickly grabbed by a pasty looking software engineer who had an uncontrollable urge to explain his job in great detail. Hostess tells me to put on some music. The hi-fi is so expensive as to be indecipherable. I jab a few random buttons, and handily find a radio station playing early Nirvana. This doesn�t go down well. Hostess grabs back remote, sniffily. I spent the rest of the evening being jaded and experimenting with various substitutes for tonic with a couple of female solicitors who were both actually dead nice, but a bit older and in the market for husbandry.

It all gets a bit hazy after that, though I vaguely remember washing all the glasses in exchange for a night on hostess� sofa and only breaking about 2 of them before she tried (unsuccessfully) to stop me. I think the moral of the story is: Never ever agree to ever go to any parties ever. Don�t even leave the house. Stay single and enjoy, with me, a life of simple, pure, celibacy. It can only help you to feel as balanced and contented as I am.

�I hope I haven�t failed you�I want to be of some use�eventually.�

Today�s special guests

*sorry. It�s in bad form to quote yourself, but the demo cd is on repeat as I churn out copies for the baying public.