The phrase may be dated and trigger class war on Twitter, but that’s no reason not to have a few friends round
Many years ago, long before the invention of Twitter and avocado on sourdough, a man had the temerity to break up with me. At the time, the reason he gave for this outrage was that he no longer found me attractive. Later, though, rumours reached me that among several other factors involved was my supposed fondness for dinner parties: events, I now discovered, that he considered not only incredibly tedious, but repulsively bourgeois to boot.
Naturally, I laughed my head off at this. I don’t remember him ever turning down the Nigella Lawson chicken thing that was then my star dish, and if he’d truly wanted to spend his evening alone reading Eric Hobsbawm and listening to Billy Bragg, he’d only to say. But I was also struck by his terminology. I mean, who uses the phrase “dinner party” these days? Not me, for one. Don’t most people just invite a few friends over for food, wine and slightly tipsy conversations about (delete as applicable) books, their lunatic boss, or what X said to Y when he found out that she was having an affair with Z?
It's as if we're still in a world of Elizabeth Shaw mints, Party Susans, and Margo Leadbetter-style evening gowns
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