Real life | 3 May 2012

Parking tickets I can cope with. Not being invited to a close friend’s daughter’s wedding is the final straw.

I am told there are complicated reasons why I have been excluded from a glittering event everyone I know is going to. One story being leaked to placate me is that the invites have been messed up by the incompetent party planners, goddam them. Yes, well. I think we all know what that means.

The bottom line is this: I have been deemed unfashionable. And when one ceases to be fashionable one must submit to the judgment of one’s peers and move on.
I have only myself to blame. I have been spending most of my time in jeans and Hunters walking the dog or riding the horses.

My metropolitan life has taken a back seat. I have neglected the circuit, ceased to cultivate the urban elite. I have disappeared beneath a wide-brimmed leather Drover hat.

The beautiful people have forgotten that I exist.

London life? You can keep it. Like Margot Leadbetter in The Good Life, I slammed the phone down on a friend whose society wedding invite did manage to turn up and shouted at the boyfriend, ‘William! We’re moving to Cobham!’

And before you say the words frying pan and fire, let me explain that our choice of location is dictated by the fact that between us we now have four horses stabled there. Yes, I realise that looking for a property in prime Chelsea footballer commuter belt that costs less than £15 million is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Yes, I am mildly appalled that Savills website calls Cobham, with no trace of irony that I can detect, ‘the Beverley [sic] Hills of the south east’.