We’re almost a year into the lockdowns now. I know this, because they began in earnest around my birthday, 21 March. So, poor me, being one of the first to have two birthdays ruined by the pandemic response. I’ll take pity from anyone, but there really is no need on this occasion because I couldn’t be happier about it. I find parties stressful at the best of times. If it’s my own party, I find the experience nothing short of traumatic.
It’s not that I’m sociable; I generally love talking to people. It’s just that at parties I’m never quite sure for how long you are supposed to talk to the same person. Plainly you can’t talk all evening, even if you both want to, in which case the conversation has to end at some point. But how? I can’t tell you how tricky I find this. If a gift from God in the shape of some third-party intervention doesn’t materialise – “Excuse me, sorry, but you must come over and say hello to xxx” – then I feel quite stuck.
Not infrequently I’ve feigned a need to use the toilet. Once in there, I just stand around wondering how long a standard wee should take before re-entering the fray. If there’s a queue for the toilet, by the way, that’s fine, because it’s a good opportunity to strike up conversations that have a definite end to them. These are my kind of conversations. My ideal scenario would be to have a party during which every 10 minutes a whistle was blown to signal for everyone to change.
I attempted a variation of this at my 40th birthday, a sit-down meal for 40 people, many of whom didn’t know each other. Nightmare. I decided that, if I shuffled the pack between each course, it would at least avoid anyone being stuck all night with someone they weren’t getting on with. I assigned each place at the table a number. Raffle tickets were drawn at the start of the evening and guests proceeded to their allotted places. Then, between each course, raffle tickets were drawn again and everyone moved around. I thought it worked brilliantly, though I’m not sure anyone else did. But they could all lump it; it was my birthday after all. There will just be three of us and a dog this year. No raffle tickets or tactical toilet trips necessary. Bliss.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
