Well, folks, it’s been a while. Almost 6 months to be exact and I wish I
could tell y’all the that the hiatus was due to a glamorous sabbatical world tour
extravaganza, a whirlwind romance ending in happily ever after or a lottery win
that led to 180 days of being sozzled on pink fizz.
But, no, just took a break to sort out some
things in my real life – the one that (nearly!) pays the bills, goes to work,
has hangovers and heartache and isn’t always as funny and fabulous as Countrydropper is – but, fear not, with the advent of spring (and, yes, I am
aware that it is mid-June. I live in London,
after all. Home to two seasons – grey, wet and cold and grey, wet and warm. As it is less cold than warm, it must be spring.
It damn sure ain’t summer.) I am back on
the funny wagon. Or, at least the “I
think I am” funny wagon. But, you must be
mildly amused or you wouldn’t have gotten this far!
So, here I sit contemplating my Saturday
night plans – a house party. Now, for all y’all back home, that may mean
something akin to a 90s Moby event replete with glow sticks and bad dancing,
but for those of us city dwellers it just means a party at someone’s “house” (AKA
flat) as opposed to a pub or bar. Which
really means, bring your own booze and no 11 pm closing time. My kinda shindig. But, another aspect of the London House Party
is fancy dress.
What, you Amerixan (see what I did
there? I kept the Texas while still
including the America as all my friends know that a Texan is a Texan first, an
American second. But, some of y’all didn’t have the good luck to be from God’s
Country, so I lump y’all in there, too) folks will be thinking, who wears a
cocktail formal to someone’s house? But, no, fancy dress is code for costume as
opposed to black tie, which is code for, well, black tie.
Yes, the Brits love to dress up like every
day is Halloween. Which is ironic as
Halloween here is a real let down. For
people who invented irony, the hallmark of Halloween, they certainly don’t get
the point on October 31. No, people seem
to think that is has to be something “scary” so you see a bunch of people in
costumes with some fake blood and gore added to it. You haven’t seen anything
til you have seen a zombie Michael Jackson or a corpse Taylor Swift. As an aside, my best British Halloween
costume ever was during the election year in 2008 when I went as Sarah Palin.
Scary and ironic all at once. Result.
So, as there is nothing ironic or clever
about Halloween, these fancy dress parties abound. I, myself, have had not too few, the first
being a Bad Taste party, which was one of the best soirees I have had. Well, until the panic moment when my two
terrorist bedecked friends decided to fire their toy guns outside my flat. Which was next door to the Chilean Embassy and
across the street from the Turkish Embassy.
Probably not a good idea to have a balaclava and flak jacketed “IRA”
dude exchanging fire with the thobe clad “Muslim” outside my front door. (And, no, I don’t know why I used the
quotation marks for my friend, who actually is Muslim, and yes, I did have to
google “Muslim man’s robe” to learn that it was actually called a thobe.)
But, I digress.
So, tonight’s fancy dress theme is The
Great Gatsby. Now, I have long hair and
a curvy figure, so I am already at a disadvantage for the 20s when women were
supposed to look like sparkly bejewelled little boys. Not much I can do about that, so my uber lame
costume is an art deco necklace and a black dress. I am sure I have a feather boa and some black
silk gloves in my fancy dress box.
(Yes, I am 40 years old and I have a toy
box. It has a pink silk witch’s hat, a sparkly American flag cowboy hat, devil’s
horns, said boa and gloves etc. One can
never be too prepared for an impromptu fancy dress affair.)
I am looking forward to this party, but
with some trepidation. The last fancy
dress themed event that I (and many of tonight’s guests) attended was my
Fabulous 40s Party in December. A
fantastic event, with bottles of champagne, waiters with amazing hors d’oeuvres
and nibbles, the world’s largest cheese plate and the most amazing 1940s themed
costumes ever (including a cameo appearance by an 8 month old Winston
Churchill, munching on his pacifier/dummy turned cigar). We danced and drank and celebrated in a
magnificent country manor house in Suffolk until the wee hours of the
morning. We had a wonderful brunch the
next morning with homemade pancakes, roasted chicken, stuffing, potatoes, mimosas
and more wine.
It was the perfect weekend.
And, then…the Kraken was unleashed.
Otherwise known as Norovirus or the winter
vomiting bug, it starts off subtly with a “hmm, I feel a bit NQR." (not quite
right for the non-Aussies) Must be
having a delayed onset of a hangover…maybe I will just lie down….to a “wow,
maybe I am still drunk as that was some serious projectile vomiting, I better
chug a big pint of water"….to an, "uh-oh…."
To put it more delicately, my friend Rich
said he felt like a tube of toothpaste squeezed out both ends.
So, some of us were still out in the country,
some had actually made it home, some were en-route. But, all of us (bar 3) were struck down at
some point in varying degrees of horrific-ness. I was still in the House of
Hell (as it came to be known in my mind) along with a few friends and we had to
alter travel plans and stay an extra night as one friend (who shall remain
nameless!) was unable to leave the safety of indoor plumbing. Now, you would think that the nice folks who
rented the house to us would have let us stay for free given the medical
necessity, but, no, the money grubbers insisted on charging my friend for the
night.
I take comfort in the fact that the virus
can live for up to 14 days on surfaces and that the owners were staying in the
house the next weekend for their family Christmas. Karma is a b*tch.
So, a technicolor end to what had been a
glorious weekend and party. I will certainly never forget turning 40. Nor will my friends I suspect, as every time
we have gotten together since that night, the Kraken has come up in
conversation like an old war story at a VFW event. We endured and we survived, but we are all a
little marked by the event.
In hindsight, maybe having a fancy dress
theme based on a war wasn’t such a great idea. Maybe staying in village that
had been home to the strategic military encampment of the US Air Force during
World War 2 was tempting fate a bit. And, maybe, just maybe, having a friend
who (randomly) dressed as a priest and staying in a former monastery was a bit
irreverent.
I am sure tonight will be different – what could
be better than the Roaring 20s?
I can’t imagine an illustrious ending to a Great
Gatsby themed affair. Nothing fortuitous
about that, right?
At least it isn’t the Hamptons. Or summer.
