Real life | 31 December 2011

By the time you read this I shall probably be 40. I say probably not because I am thinking of ending it all to ensure I remain for ever young in people’s hearts. I say it because the way things are going, the event may go completely unnoticed. It may be so ignored by my nearest and dearest that I may just wake up on 1 January and forget that I am 40.

I tried to plan a party, you see, a big bash, but unfortunately I came up against RSVP evasion. I suppose it doesn’t help to be born when people are traditionally busy drinking mint-flavoured Bailey’s and going to far-flung places to visit relatives they don’t like. But putting that issue aside, the unavoidable truth was painful: it turns out not that many people like me enough to tell me they definitely will come to my 40th.

On the other hand, I did discover a lot of people who didn’t hate me enough to say ‘no, I don’t want to come’ and who made up all kinds of weird excuses that meant they couldn’t tell me one way or the other. But in a way, this ambiguity was even worse.

If people had just said, ‘No, thanks, I don’t much fancy it,’ it would have been so much easier to plan the catering. As it was, people prevaricated to the extent that it was impossible to put a number on mini vol-au-vonts.

If you ask me, there is a special place in hell for people who won’t give a straight answer to a party invitation. I hope the devil sharpens an extra hot poker for their posteriors. Messing someone about when they’re trying to hire a marquee and an Abba tribute band is noxious behaviour.